Numbers 6:22-27 – “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them:

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  lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.’  27 “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them.”  NASU

I love dealing with, studying, teaching and preaching Blood Covenant.  It gets my motor running at top speed for it describes the heart of God and His purpose for mankind and is deeply misunderstood or under-appreciated by much of the Christian world.  The more I study it the more I know I have only scratched the surface and the gold mine is deep and filled with incredible treasures God wants us to enjoy, experience and include in our lives.

In the lives of the Hebrews, the Blessing of the Covenant was prayed or spoken over them every day and multiple times each day.  The High Priest would raise his hands and invoke this blessing on the children of Israel at the morning and evening sacrifices.  It was not some religious incantation but they fully believed, and so do I, that those words were a conveyance of power to their lives.  The words being spoken from God conveyed power!  This was a release from the Spirit of God to enable them to become successful.  It moved from the inside where true prosperity begins to the exterior and material things.

To be blessed meant to be prosperous.  It is speaking of ‘prosperity of the spirit’ and moves from the heart to the actions to the involvements to the material.  It meant to enjoy ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’ health. It mean to have a long life.  It meant that those so blessed had an aurora about them that the world could never quite understand and often misunderstood.  It is what produces a certain strangeness in Christianity and causes the enemies of our soul to flee.  That is the Blessing!

THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU – – [v.24]

That is the beginning that you are kept by the Lord.  We are walking in the midst of an alien world and in that darkness light lives inside us.  Jesus assured us that the world would hate us because of His presence in us.  You live constantly in the keeping power of God!

In the castles of Europe you go through ‘the keep’.  It is the first gate of the castle and you accessed the castle proper through it.  If an enemy tried to access the castle they were filtered through this area and if you looked up you would notice that guards were on the balconies and from there they defended the castle.  Getting through the Keep would be a formidable task.  Picture that when you hear “the Lord keep you.”  He is on guard and keeping us!  Remember in Zechariah 2:8 where we read, “…he who touches you touches the apple of My eye.”  Imagine that!  Everything stops until this assault is dealt with.  You can stub your toe, bruise your arm, cut yourself and keep on working but get something in your eye and you shut down until you deal with that.  That’s God and if something touches us it is like getting something in His eye and He will deal with it!  You are KEPT!   The only problem is too often we do not really believe that truth!

Psalm 23 and 27 are based on the concept of The Keep and Keeping!  David wrote them in traumatic times in his life.  He was being chased by a demonized king who wanted his head.  There were times when it appeared he would succeed but God continued to KEEP him.

I dare not stop here so let’s hit the pause button and pick up in the next post about this powerful and wonderful truth from God’s word.  May you walk blessed kept by the Power and Grace of God!  Blessings!