A BLESSED BENEDICTION

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will, and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.

Greet all your leaders and all the Lord’s people. Those from Italy send you their greetings.

Grace be with you all.

Hebrews 13:20-21, 23-25

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I have had the deep privilege of preaching quite a few times in my thirty plus years as a Bible teacher. Each message has been a rich gift from the Lord, spoken through me to those I was addressing on those given Sundays.

Now, in traditional church services, the person delivering the message would also close the worship time with what was formally called a benediction. With its roots in the Latin language, much like most of the English language spoken today, we can derive the meaning of the word “benediction” by its two parts. “Bene” means blessing while “diction” translates to speaking well of. Combine these to and you can easily see a person hearing a benediction should feel that they were spoken well of through the conveying of a blessing.

With this in mind, someone conducting a church service could write their own benediction. I have done this on occasion but more often than not, I prefer to derive my benedictions straight from the Word of God because what better source could there be than the scriptures themselves. One such example of this is found in the closing of the letter to the Hebrews. Look at these words from the end of chapter 13:

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will, and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. Vv. 20-21

From this, we want to derive the blessing the Jewish Christian writer is extending to his Hebrew brothers and sisters in Christ. This blessing has two distinct parts:

1. That God would equip the Hebrew Christians with everything they need to fulfill His will as they lived out each day.

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will.

Note how the Christian author of this letter attributes honor and majesty to God. He could have just said “May God equip you with everything good for doing His will” but that would have been short-selling the Maker and Master of all creation. And so we find great definition applied to God here, ensuring the people know that He is their source of peace, the One who possesses the power to raise them from the dead just as He did His Son and our Lord Jesus, and their Shepherd, the One who leads them through this worldly life into the eternal one yet to come.

It was through this God, the Lord God Almighty, that the writer was asking to bless his readers, petitioning that they be equipped “with everything good” so to carry out “His will”.

2. That God would work within the Hebrew Christians to produce work through Jesu8s that would be pleasing in His sight.

...may He work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

You can see where the first part of the blessing is needed for the second part to happen. For once God would provide the Hebrew Christians with everything good needed to carry out His will, then they, through modeling and following the lead of Jesus, could be obedient to that will and produce the good works that God desires, the works that would be “pleasing to Him”.

Friends, this wished blessing is one we should speak over one another today because it is just as applicable and important now than it was more than 2,000 years ago. And so as I get set to finish our study of this letter to the Hebrews, I pray that the peace-centered, resurrecting, Shepherd God impart on you every good and perfect gift (James 1:17) so that His will might be done, resulting in works of goodness that become a blessing to the divine Blesser.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the last verses in this letter before moving onto James.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.