Covenantal Blessing for Covenantal Faithfulness

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI, take it with a grain of salt…

I wonder if you’ve ever heard a parent say to their children, or you can remember a parent saying this to you, or you’ve said this to your own children, as I have, “You know, if you would just listen to me and be good, it would go well for you.” You know, you find yourself sort of at loggerheads with a child, and the child is just in one of those phases where they’re rebelling a lot, and you find yourself saying to them, “You know, if you obey, then you won’t be disciplined, and then your life will be far more enjoyable. But you keep being naughty, you keep being disobedient, and so I need to keep disciplining you because that’s what God requires of me.”

We know as parents, don’t we, that there is a connection between blessing and obedience, blessing and faithfulness with our children. And there’s the opposite, right? There is a connection between punishment, discipline, and disobedience, or you might say cursing and disobedience, to use the blessing/cursing language.

And this connection that we see with parents and children is one we see also in our covenantal relationship to God. In our covenantal relationship to God as individuals and as a church, there is an intimate connection between God’s blessing and our faithfulness. There is an intimate connection between our faithfulness and how we are blessed.

And this shouldn’t surprise us. I think we can illustrate this pretty easily using a marriage relationship. You know, if I decide to be unfaithful in my marriage and go out with other women, I can’t expect my wife to bless me, can I? My marriage is not going to be a blessed relationship if I’m a terrible husband. And so in that covenantal union between me and my spouse, we understand that the more we are faithful to one another, the more faithfully we love one another and commit ourselves to each other and serve one another, the more blessed the relationship will be as a whole, and the more blessed our experience of that covenantal relationship will be.

And you know, we see the exact same thing in the scriptures as it relates to our covenantal relationship with God, so that God can say to Eli the priest in 1 Samuel 2:30, “I will honor those who honor me, and I will despise those who despise me.” There was a connection between God’s treatment of His people and His people’s treatment of Him.

And this is important for us to recognize, because one of the subtle temptations for the Western church, I can’t speak of the non-Western church, but for the Western church is one of spiritual apathy, where the bare minimum is just okay. Maybe you’ve had these thoughts or maybe you’ve had these conversations with people you know, where they make comments like, “Well, why would I go twice when I can only go once?” Or, “I tithe X amount, but if I do something extra, I take it off my tithe.” Or, “What’s the bare minimum I can get away with?”

So when you talk to them about maybe the Lord’s Day, they’ll say, “Well, how much do I have to do? How much shouldn’t I do?” And they try and squeeze it down to the least amount possible. How much is the Lord’s Day? How long is the Lord’s Day? Is it just the morning? Is it the morning and the afternoon? And they try and constantly reduce what they should give to the Lord. It’s the bare minimum. Finding the least, and maybe that’s your own heart sometimes. Maybe you struggle with that. Maybe you’re tempted to think, “Well, enough is enough. Not my all, but just some.”

And our passage today confronts this temptation. It confronts spiritual laziness as it addresses the nature of covenantal blessing in response to covenantal faithfulness. Now, if you don’t want to be covenantally blessed, well, then I can’t do anything for you. Well, we’re basically wasting our time. And you’re wasting your time, let’s be honest. But if you want to be covenantally blessed, if you want God’s face upon you with joy and blessing and not discipline, then this passage is very helpful to you.

And it all begins with what we call covenantal headship, covenantal headship in verse 13.

We remember where we were, right? Yesterday, in the Bible story, not yesterday for us, but yesterday in the Bible story, the people of God had gathered together as one big group. All the people had come together, and the law of God had been read for some 6 hours, and the people had sat, and they had responded with weeping at first, and they had been corrected and said, “No, today is a day of rejoicing,” and they had turned their weeping into rejoicing. They had gone home and celebrated with their families. They had gone to different people’s homes, and travelers would have been welcomed into homes in Jerusalem, and they would have spread and shared their variety of food and gifts among the different people so that everyone could rejoice together as one people.

And in the morning, something different occurs. In the morning, we’re told that the heads came together, the heads of fathers’ houses, of all the people, along with the priests and the Levites, and they came together to Ezra. And you have to ask the question, don’t you? Why just the heads? I mean, yesterday, everybody came. Everyone was there except for those that couldn’t understand, so there was a crèche. Apart from the crèche, everybody was there. Why is it that on day 2, only the heads and the priests and Levites are there?

Well, firstly, we’re told in the text why they came. It’s pretty straightforward. They came together to Ezra, verse 13. They came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the Lord, in order to gain insight, to gain understanding, the word means. They came because they recognized, having heard the word yesterday, that they lacked something. They lacked understanding. They lacked insight into what God’s law said. They lacked insight into what God required of them. So that’s the easy answer. They came to be taught.

But why them? Why were the wives not there? Why were the children not there? And I think there’s 2 primary answers.

Firstly is what you might call the multiplication of knowledge. You see, there’s a fundamental problem in Jerusalem, and that is there is a monopoly of understanding. What I mean by a monopoly of understanding is there’s one extremely skilled and gifted scribe. That one man cannot teach an entire nation. Ezra, as good and godly as he is, cannot teach everybody. And this doesn’t surprise us, does it? Because I can’t be in all of your houses after dinner to lead family worship with you. Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t be able to lead family worship with my own family, and also I can’t be in more places than one, so it’s relatively difficult. And so I can’t teach all of you. I would curl up and die if I attempted to teach every single person throughout the week in every family. And it’s the same for Ezra. He can’t be everywhere. And so his knowledge and his understanding needs to be multiplied throughout Israel.

It’s a little bit like Exodus 18. In Exodus 18, we have Moses’ father-in-law Jethro coming to him. And Moses’ father-in-law comes to him, and he sees Moses. And what Moses does is he gathers together all of Israel, and they all stand there, and he makes judgments. All the people come to him and ask him questions, and he tells them what’s right and what’s wrong, and they all stand there together as one big group. And Jethro, the father-in-law, who’s got a little bit more experience than Moses, looks at this and says, “This is not smart. You guys are gonna just absolutely cook yourself. You’re sitting in the wilderness in the sun all day long with just one guy trying to rule over absolutely everybody.”

And so he says to him, “Listen to me, Moses, my son. Listen to me. This is what you do. Go and get heads. Go and get elders, men to rule, and set them over 1000, over 100, over fifties, over tens, and they can deal with the easy stuff. And anything hard, they pass up the chain until it comes back to you, and then you deal with the really difficult things. You need to multiply yourself because you will wear out yourself and the people,” he says.

And it’s that same idea that’s being carried out here. Israel cannot teach everyone. They need a multiplication of knowledge.

Which leads us into the third reason why the heads gathered together, and that is because it is the primary responsibility of the heads of homes to teach their families. And this is not particularly well thought of in our society or, broadly speaking, in the church, if we’re honest. But there is a creational headship reality, starting in Genesis chapter 2, that leads us to understand it is the primary responsibility of the head of the home, the father and husband, to train his family in the way they should go.

And so it all begins in Genesis chapter 2 with Adam. Now, in Genesis 2:16, Adam has been created, but Eve has not, and God gives Adam a command. What command does God give to Adam? “Don’t eat from the tree.” Now, who’s not there to receive the command? Eve, that’s right. And so when Eve gets made, she has no idea that she’s not allowed to eat from the tree. So what does Adam need to do? He needs to teach her. He needs to take her and say, “Eve, you’re not allowed to eat from this tree. God said so.” And we know this took place because in chapter 3, even though Eve expands on it a little bit, she knows that they’re not meant to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, doesn’t she? And so Adam’s done his job.

And it’s striking that at every single major covenantal junction in the Old Testament, it is to the heads that God appears to establish His covenant. He does not come to Abraham and Sarah. He comes to Abraham. He does not come to Isaac and Rebekah. He comes to Isaac. Because it is the responsibility and the accountability of the father and husband to pass on what is entrusted to them.

We see this in the New Testament when the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians and says women are to be silent in church, and if they have questions, what are they to do? They’re to ask their husbands at home, and their husbands are to teach them. And he says to Timothy the same thing. They are to learn in submission and in quietness.

Now, this means a couple of different things. It means, wives, that your husbands are ultimately responsible before God for your edification. Husbands, it means you are responsible before God for your family’s edification.

Now, some people will call this the patriarchy. Some people will call it headship. Other people will call it complementarian. I don’t really care. It’s just biblical. This is just what the scriptures say. And don’t worry about whether people think it’s likable or not. It’s very, very simplistic. In every area of society, God establishes social structures. Within the church, the teachers and the rulers are to be men. Within the government, it’s to be men. The kings are to be men. Within homes, it is to be men. And this might not be popular, but it’s what God’s word declares over and over and over again.

Now, of course, we know that doesn’t mean that women have no part to play. That would be absurd. Guess what? My wife does the majority of the teaching in my home. She’s a homeschool mother. But I am ultimately accountable before God for all of it, and I am responsible before God for all of it, and I am to oversee the education and the upbuilding of the little sheep that God has entrusted to us. And the same is true for every home.

I think this has some important applications for us as we see these heads gathering together. They gather together because they want to be taught so that they can teach their homes, and therefore, it’s very important that we order our homes according to biblical principles. We must not buy into the egalitarianism that the world and much of the church is constantly trying to feed us. Though men and women are perfectly equal in God’s sight in worth, they have different roles to play. This is obvious from biology, right? You know, there’s 1 thing I can do many things. There’s something I physically cannot do. So I cannot give birth to a child. It’s just not possible. God has not made me to do it. God has created us differently, and He has ordered our families differently, and so we must honor God and order our homes the way God does.

Secondly, fathers, husbands, men, I know that biblically this means you must be very careful that you do not fleece the sheep. Do you know what I mean by fleecing the sheep? It’s a phrase that comes from the Old Testament. It’s used in relation to the Israelite shepherds over the people of God who would take all of the benefits of leadership and do nothing to care for the sheep.

Heads, we must be very careful that we do not abuse our authority by demanding submission and obedience from our wives and children while fulfilling none of the obligations that God puts upon us. Your job as a head is to faithfully lead and love and lay down your life and care for and provide and protect and teach those under your care, from the oldest to the youngest. Do not fleece your sheep. God will hold you accountable for how you treat your sheep.

It should be an easy thing for our wives to follow us, for our wives to submit to us because of our love, because of our servant-hearted nature, because of the gentleness with which we teach and the graciousness with which we treat those under our care. We shouldn’t exasperate our children, should we? And yet mustn’t we confess that so often we do. So often we mistreat those that are under our authority. And so when you do, repent. Repent to God and repent to them. Acknowledge your sin before God and man and be rid of fleecing of the sheep.

I think it’s an encouragement for those of us that have heads over us to listen to them, to learn from them, from their words and from their lives. Not to try and take over authority. That’s tempting, isn’t it? Especially sometimes we look at heads and we think to ourselves, “Well, they’re not really worth following. They’re not very good. They get it wrong all the time.” Well, you know what? God didn’t make you the judge of whether your head was good or not. He told you to obey your head. He told you to follow the one that He’s given to lead you. So just do it and trust the Lord in these matters. Trust Him and pray for him. If you think he’s not very good, labor in prayer. Pray for him day in and day out that he would grow in godliness, and do all you can to encourage and build him up.

So we see covenantal headship at the core of covenantal blessing.

And the second thing we see is covenantal faithfulness. Covenantal faithfulness in verse 14 through to 17.

You know, people often ask the question, what is God’s will? Maybe you’ve thought this. You’ve been at a juncture in your life, and you think to yourself, “What is God’s will? I really wish there was just a sign in the sky, you know, I’d have a vision at night, and God would tell me what to do. What is God’s will for my life? There’s a secret recipe out there of a will I have to follow, and I need to know what to do.”

Well, can I tell you? It’s very easy. What is God’s will for my life? It’s this. Well, we read of it earlier, didn’t we? “We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely, and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it, for since the entire manner of service which God requires of us is described in it at great length.” The entire service.

Would you like to know what God requires of you at this particular juncture in your life? Open up the Word of God and read it. God’s will is set forth before your very eyes in the Word of God. Search here, and you will find the answers.

The people of God, they wanted to know God’s will, didn’t they? That’s why they gathered. They wanted to know God’s will so they could teach it to their families because they were insufficient in understanding of God’s will. So they came to Ezra the scribe, they gathered as heads, and Ezra began to teach them. And what did they discover? Well, we’re told they discovered the Feast of Booths.

Verse 14: “They found it written in the law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the 7th month.” They found out that there’s a thing called a Feast of Booths. Well, that’s striking, isn’t it? It’s amazing what happens when you read the Old Testament. Oh, look at that. There’s a feast we’d just completely forgotten about.

You’ll find it. If you turn with me, you’ll find it in the book of Leviticus 23. Leviticus chapter 23. We came here last time because we talked about the Feast of Trumpets, remember? Now we’re looking at the Feast of Booths, and you’ll find it in chapter 23, picking up at verse 39.

We’ll just read from 39. “And on the 15th day of the 7th month when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord 7 days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the 8th day shall be a solemn rest, and you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God 7 days. You shall celebrate it as a feast of the Lord for 7 days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations. You shall celebrate it in the 7th month. You shall dwell in booths for 7 days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

Now, what was the Feast of Booths primarily about? Yes, building booths. Children, if you don’t know what booths are, it’s like a little wooden hut. Okay? It’s around about the time of September, October. They were to build little wooden huts and stay in them for 7 days, no matter the weather, so rain or wind, hail. I have no idea what the weather in Israel looks like during September, October, but they were to be in booths.

Why? What were they trying to remember? What were they celebrating? Well, they were remembering the wilderness. What were they remembering? That God had faithfully led them through the wilderness, and that their forebears had dwelled in booths and tents day in and day out for 40 years in the wilderness, and yet their shoes had never worn out, their sandals had never worn out. God had been faithful to them year in and year out.

And what’s all the more striking now as you sit in the shoes of the people of God with Ezra is the people of God have now endured a second wilderness wandering, haven’t they? Because they’ve just been out in Babylon, and they’ve been out in captivity, and they’ve just been saved out of, quote-unquote, “Egypt” again, Babylon, and they’ve been redeemed again. And now, as I’ve said before, now they no longer say, “As you have been redeemed from Egypt,” but, “As you have been redeemed from Babylon.” And they’ve wandered through the wilderness, and they’ve returned to a land without walls, and so it’s almost like being in a wilderness again. But now the walls are established. God has been faithful, and so now we must remember what God has done. We must remember the faithfulness of the Lord.

It was about remembering God’s character as a steadfast, loving God. And so they read of this in the law. And so what did they do? Well, they did it.

Now they had 13 days to get this done. You see, ’cause we remember, don’t we? Chapter 8 began on the first day of the month, and it’s on the 15th day that they are to celebrate it, and they’re on day 2, so they’re running out of time. They’ve got 13 days till they’re meant to be celebrating, till they start the feast. So what does everyone need to do? Well, they need to go home really fast and start teaching their families, don’t they? They need to go home and gather everybody together, and that’s exactly what we see takes place.

Have a look with me. The people, verse 16: The people went out and brought them, that is, the sticks and the leaves and for the making of everything, and made booths for themselves, each on his roof and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God. You remember, people are scattered around Jerusalem, probably within and probably without. There’s people everywhere. There’s people staying in people’s homes. There’s probably people staying in surrounding villages as they have this great gathering together, and the heads, having heard the word of God, immediately go back to their families and, and you can imagine it, can’t you?

Malachi walks through the door. Not that Malachi, another Malachi. Malachi walks through the door, and Malachi’s wife, Ruth, says, “Well, what did you learn, honey? You went to seek God’s will. What did you learn?” He said, “Well, we discovered in the word of God that there’s a thing called the Feast of Booths.” And if it’s anything like today, she’ll probably say, “Well, I already knew that.” But she probably said, “I don’t know. What is the Feast of Booths?” He says, “Well, let me tell you. We discovered it’s this special day, and we get to spend time, 7 days, resting and staying in booths.” “Well, what do you mean by booths?” “Well, we’re gonna make some wooden structures.” “Oh, do we have to go tenting again?” “Yes, we’re going tenting again. It’s gonna be rugged. We’re gonna be roughing it.” “Why would we do that?” “Because we wanna remember the faithfulness of God. So pack up the children, grab the stuff. Let’s go build some huts together.”

And they go back to Jerusalem, and what do they do? They gather together, and there’s booths everywhere. Could you imagine the sight of Jerusalem? Most of the city is destroyed still. They haven’t rebuilt the homes yet. There’s just rubble everywhere, and scattered all over Jerusalem is these temporary wooden structures and leaves everywhere, and olive branches from the Mount of Olives, where Jesus would spend so much of His time. And they gather them all together, and there, everywhere you look, you see people in booths and everyone talking about what? God’s faithfulness.

I wonder what it was like. I wonder what it was like for our great, great, great grandparents to dwell in booths on the way out of Egypt. Do you remember what it must have been like for God to set the people free? Ah, yes. Well, guess what my grandfather told me about being set free from Babylon. I’ve seen God’s faithfulness with my own eyes.

They did it, but notice how they did it. Did they do it, you know, just with a little bit of effort? We’re told all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths, this is in verse 17, and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua, which is just another way of spelling Joshua, from the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, to that day, the people of Israel had not done so, and there was very great rejoicing.

From the days of Joshua, nothing like this had taken place. Now, we’re not meant to understand that as meaning no one had ever celebrated the Feast of Booths, ’cause you actually see it happening in Ezra, Chronicles, and Kings. It’s a qualitative thing. It’s a quality thing. It’s not that no one’s ever done this, but no one’s ever done it like this, with this level of commitment, where every father and every mother and every child is gathering together in Jerusalem. No one’s sitting at home saying, “Oh, honestly? Again? We did it last year. Do we really need to do it again? Let’s just send John. He can be our representative.” There’s no bare minimum here.

Now, don’t you hear this? People say, “Go to church twice on the Lord’s day?” “Oh, once is enough for me.” I’ve had this conversation. I remember having a conversation with an office bearer in a church, and I said to them, they were telling me how much they loved worship. They said, “I love worship. I love worship, the singing, the sermon. I just love it.” And I said to this person, it’s not one of our members, by the way, it’s from another church, “Well, if you love church so much, why don’t you go a second time?” And he said to me, “Uh, because the racing’s on in the evening.” Once is enough. Bare minimum, right?

How is there a bare minimum? No, it’s everything. They’re off, they’re gathering, they’re getting myrtle branches, and olive branches, and wild olive branches, and palm branches. They want to do the whole hog. Why? Because they want to honor their God. Because first thought in their mind and heart is what pleases God.

You see, they’ve sought God’s will by coming to Ezra. They’ve heard God’s will, so they go home and tell it to their families, and then they do God’s will. See, knowing God’s covenantal will ought to lead to us being covenantally faithful, right? It just makes sense. But not just covenantally faithful, but with zeal. Notice it’s with zeal and with specificity that they do it, because we’re told in verse 18 that they did it according to the rule.

They didn’t say, “Well, you know what? It’s just, with petrol prices these days, it’s a lot to go out and gather branches. And, you know, we’re trying to care for the environment. We don’t wanna be going out there and cutting trees down. They’re needed. We need these things, so let’s just live inside our houses in Jerusalem. That’s basically the same.” No. They said, “Look, God said, ‘Go and gather branches.’ So you know what I’m gonna do? Gather branches.” It’s not rocket science, right?

Brothers and sisters, can I tell you something? Christianity is not rocket science. Just read the word and do it. Now, the biggest problem is not that we don’t know what to do. If we’re honest, it’s that we don’t want to do it. Most of us are not in the position of these heads. Most of us, not all of us, but most of us have been well taught and well trained and received a wealth of biblical understanding. Our biggest problem is we can’t be bothered, if we’re actually brutally honest with ourselves.

And I think this is a clarion call for all of us to know God’s will, to do God’s will, and to do it with zeal and specificity, with particulars. Asking ourselves, “What does it look like to actually honor the Lord on the Lord’s day? What does it look like to love my neighbor as myself? What does it look like to be generous with all my heart, to rejoice, for this is the day that the Lord has made? To not repay vengeance, to not gossip. What is God’s will? Let me do it, and let me do it with zeal and specificity.”

And so we see covenantal headship, and we see covenantal faithfulness. And as the heads seek to lead their families in covenantal faithfulness, we see what? Covenantal blessing.

You know, I often say to people when I do pastoral counseling or marriage counseling with people, one of the phrases I say to people over and over and over again is, “Just listen to me and trust me. If you will just do what God says, if you will just listen to me and do what God says, we will get there.” And I take people to the word, and I show them the word and I say to them, “Look, please, just believe God’s word. Just take God at His word and try it. Trust God’s promises and do it. There is a blessing if you will just do it,” because God blesses faithfulness, doesn’t He? God blesses faithfulness always.

Now, I’m gonna add a condition on that in a second, but God always blesses faithfulness. But here’s the condition. The condition is it’s according to what God declares to be a blessing, and it’s really important that we understand this, lest we fall into the trap of the prosperity gospel. What we might call the subtle variant of the prosperity gospel, which is if I do A, B, and C, then God must do D, E, and F. As though our obedience indebts God to bless me in ways I think are blessings.

Let me give you an example of this. I heard the story, I don’t know this person, I heard the story of a woman who had raised her children with just impeccable zeal to know Christ. Did everything she could do, and she labored over and over again to raise her children in godliness. And they all professed the faith. And one of them, to her just great delight, became a minister of the gospel. And one day this minister turned up at her house and informed her that he had become a homosexual. And he joined a liberal denomination, which allowed him to carry on being a minister as a homosexual. And she became unbelievably angry at God. And the words that I was told that came out of her mouth was, “I did everything for God. How could he repay me like this?” And she never took the Lord’s Supper again.

Why? Because she had subtly begun to believe that her definition of blessing is what God owed her for her faithfulness. But here’s the key: if we are covenantally faithful, God will always covenantally bless us, but the blessing will always be according to His sovereign definition of a blessing.

And let me give you some examples from the Old Testament. Who was more righteous than anyone else in the whole earth? Noah. He was the most righteous in all of his days. And we’re told in the New Testament by Peter that he was a preacher of righteousness who was oppressed by everybody around him. What about Job? Blameless in his ways, we’re told. What was his blessing? He had everything stripped away. And yeah, he was double blessed at the end of his life with more than he started with, but he still lost all of his children. He still lost all of his camels, all of his herds, all of his flocks, everything gone. Think of Joseph, who faithfully fled the house of Potiphar. He didn’t have to. He could have enjoyed a healthy slave relationship to his master’s wife and just enjoyed life, and his master’s wife would have been very happy. But he was faithful to God, and God blessed him with prison.

And you might think to yourself, “Well, that’s not very fair.” Well, brothers and sisters, may I remind you what we’re told in the scriptures that God’s ways are higher than yours. And as Paul says, “Who are you, O clay, to question the potter?” Do you know better than God? Because I don’t.

You know, sometimes God blesses us here and now in profound ways that we ourselves would consider to be blessing. We look at the women or the husbands we’ve married, and we think to ourselves, “I’m so blessed.” And other times He takes it all away. But here’s the immovable truth. It’s always a blessing because it’s in the hands of God.

And what I think this corrects is it corrects our heart, which so quickly begins to think to ourselves, I think there’s 2 errors here. One is, you know, “I’ve been faithful, and God hasn’t been faithful to me. I’ve been faithful, and God hasn’t blessed me when He’s blessing you.” You do not understand. The other one is doubting, doubting that it’s worth actually being faithful because whenever I’m faithful, bad stuff seems to happen to me.

Brothers and sisters, we’re in a covenantal relationship with God. That means we live on covenantal terms, which means there are obligations of the covenant, but there are also blessings. And yes, some of those are here and now. Some of those we must wait till eternity, but they will come.

And of course, our greatest example of this is the Lord Jesus Christ, right? I mean, can you find anyone more faithful upon this earth? Did anyone live more faithful to the covenant than Jesus Christ? Would you say He was not blessed by His Father? Now, yet He was cursed for you. I understand that. That’s not what I’m saying. But would you say He lived without the blessing of His Father? You can’t because He said, “This is my Son in whom I’m well pleased.” He had the full blessing of His Father in heaven upon Him all the way to the cross. So that it’s not wrong to say at no point was Jesus Christ more faithful and more loved by His Father than when He hung up on a cross.

Now, let me ask you, when you go to glory, and you look into the face of Jesus Christ, and you ask Him, “Was it worth it? Are you blessed?” What would He say? “Of course. My Father blessed me by cursing me on Calvary.”

God’s ways are not our ways, and ultimately, this becomes a challenge of faith, doesn’t it? We see the blessing outworking here as the people experience rejoicing. It’s striking. There was very great rejoicing, it tells us, verse 17. See, the outcome is God pours out an immediate blessing upon them. Very great rejoicing.

Now, you might remember some great rejoicing back in verse 12. Remember, they change their affections in verse twelve, and they make great rejoicing. Now we’ve been given an additional superlative. It’s not just great rejoicing. It’s not just rejoicing. It’s very great rejoicing, exceedingly so. God pours out in response to the faithfulness of God’s people, covenantal joy together as His people.

And ultimately, all of this comes down to an act of faith. Do I believe? Do I trust God’s ways? You remember the old hymn, Trust and Obey? ‘Cause there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. There’s a lot of truth to that hymn. But it takes faith, doesn’t it? It takes faith to be faithful to God and believe He is going to bless you when everything humanly speaking around you is saying the opposite, when faithfulness costs you your family, when faithfulness costs you your business, when faithfulness costs you your life. Like John the Baptist we read of last week. Remember that? That was a costly act of faithfulness, wasn’t it? “I believe my God will bless me,” John could have said in the prison. “I have been faithful. He will bless me,” and He did. He got a shortcut to glory. I’m sure it wasn’t enjoyable losing his head, but he woke up in glory the next second in the presence of his Savior.

And brothers and sisters, the same is true for you and me, and I think this is simply put. If you reduce it right down, it’s a challenge as to whether we will trust God because the devil says to us, “I will give you the pathway to blessing.” It’s simple. I mean, look, it’s actually really easy to cheat on your taxes. I’ll show you how. I don’t mean this is the devil talking, by the way. I’ll show you how. It’s very simple, and you’ll have far more money next year than you did this year. And you know what? Your spouse is getting old, and you will have much more joy with a younger one. I’ll show you how. I’ll bring them along. And you know what? Waiting to marriage in order to embrace your spouse, that’s not enjoyable at all. Why would you do that? I’ll show you the pathway to blessing.

And the question is whether we have faith to trust God and to trust God’s way because ultimately the devil’s path of blessing in this life is always the pathway to destruction, right? But the Lord’s pathway to blessing is always a lasting one.

And so let us heed the words of Paul who says, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” You see, we see these people being faithful and being blessed so that we might be encouraged and have endurance and have hope to live for the glory of Christ.

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