We're going to look again. This is our last week in the book of Numbers for a while. I'm going to take a pause here. We may come back to it again, but today is our last one. We're going to be in Numbers chapter 22, and that's printed in your bulletin and on the screen behind me. We're going to read together out loud verses one through twelve and twenty-two through 35. So if you would join your voices with me.

The Israelites traveled on and camped in the Plains of Moab near the Jordan across from Jericho. Now Balak, son of Zippor, saw that all Israel had done to the Amorites. Moab was terrified of the people because they were numerous, and Moab dreaded the Israelites. So the Moabites said to the elders of Midian, "This hoard will devour everything around us like an ox eats up the green plants in the field." Since Balak son of Zippor was Moab's king at the time, he sent messengers to Balaam, son of Beor, at Pethor, which is by the Euphrates in the land of his people. Balak said to him, "Look, a people has come out of Egypt. They cover the surface of the land and are living right across from me. Please come and put a curse on these people for me because they are more powerful than I am. I may be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that those you bless are blessed and those you curse are cursed."

The elders of Moab and Midian departed with fees for divination in hand. They came to Balaam and reported Balak's words to him. He said to them, "Spend the night here and I will give you the answer the Lord tells me." So the officials of Moab stayed with Balaam. Then God came to Balaam and asked, "Who are these men with you?" Balaam replied to God, "Balak, son of Zippor, king of Moab, sent this messenger to me. 'Look, a people has come up out of Egypt, and they cover the surface of the land. Now come and put a curse on them for me. I may be able to fight against them and drive them away.'" Then God said to Balaam, "You are not to go with them. You are not to curse these people, for they are blessed." — Numbers 22:1-12

But God was incensed that Balaam was going, and an angel of the Lord took his stand to oppose him. Balaam was riding his donkey, and his two servants were with him. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing on the path with a drawn sword in his hand, she turned off the path and went into the field. So Balaam hit her to return her to the path. Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow passage between the vineyards with a stone wall on either side. The donkey saw the angel of the Lord and pressed herself against the wall, squeezing Balaam's foot against it. So he hit her once again. The angel stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn to the right or the left. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she crouched down under Balaam. So he became furious and beat the donkey with his stick. Then the Lord opened the donkey's mouth and she asked Balaam, "What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?" Balaam answered the donkey, "You made me look like a fool. If I had a sword in my hand, I'd kill you now." But the donkey said, "Am I not the donkey you've ridden all your life until today? Have I ever treated you this way before?" He replied, "No."

Then the Lord opened Balaam's eyes and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the path with a drawn sword in his hand. Balaam knelt low and bowed in worship on his face. The angel of the Lord asked him, "Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? Look, I came out to oppose you because I consider what you are doing to be evil. The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If she had not turned away from me, I would have killed you by now and let her live." Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, "I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the path to confront me. And now if it is evil in your sight, I will go back." Then the angel of the Lord said to Balaam, "Go with the men, but you are only to say what I tell you." So Balaam went with the officials. — Numbers 22:22-35

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I know that most of what many of us know about divination comes from Harry Potter, to be really honest. I want to ask, does anyone here know the famous professor of divination from the Harry Potter books? Anybody remember? Trelawney. Very good. A lot of Harry Potter nerds with us this morning. Well done.

Professor Trelawney is played by Emma Thompson, and if you remember, she wears these giant goggle-like glasses, and she's kind of goofy. Harry Potter and his friends know that Trelawney's class is kind of a joke. But why is she the professor? Well, it goes back to 1980, years before she was hired by Professor Dumbledore. Because as he was interviewing her, suddenly she went into a trance and she made this prediction which became known as the prophecy. Does anybody remember this? This is the prophecy that drives all the Harry Potter books.

And here's how it goes. A picture of Emma Thompson going into a trance. She says this: "The one with the power to vanquish the dark lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies, and the dark lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power that the dark lord knows nothing about and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives."

You know, and of course, this prophecy turns out to be true. This is the prophecy concerning Harry Potter himself and this is what drives the books. Now, as you think about that story, the question is: Is Trelawney a real prophet, prophetess, or is she kind of a quack? And the answer is, yeah, kind of both. And that's kind of like the main character in our story today, Balaam. Is he a quack or is he for real? And the answer is, yeah.

Now, look, I know. Easter Sunday and you come to church and you're expecting empty tomb, you're expecting Jesus raised from the dead, and we're talking about a talking donkey in church. What kind of church is this? I know some of y'all did this at Christmas: "Why are we talking about a dragon at Christmas time?" That's where you are. Sorry, y'all. That's the church you go to. But hang with me because this passage leads us to themes that lead us to an empty tomb and it's going to be a wild ride this Easter, but I know y'all can do it.

So here's my outline if you take notes. Here's what we're going to talk about this morning: We're going to talk about the Dark Lord. We're going to talk about the Blind Seer. We're going to talk about the Talking Donkey and we're going to talk about the Chicago Cubs. Alright, y'all ready? Okay. Let's go.

The Dark Lord

Now, I'm not talking about Voldemort, of course. Y'all, this is church. We're talking about Balak, the king of Moab. He's mentioned in this passage. Now, there are two tribes that live near the promised land that God had promised his people and they are almost on the edge of this, ready to go in. This king, Balak, sees 2,000,000 people, including 600,000 fighting men approaching his country and he is afraid because he's heard about these people. He's heard about how the god who's associated with them destroyed the entire Egyptian army without one loss of Israelite life. I mean, you'd be scared too.

And so he's thinking, "What can I do? How do I prevent this disaster from happening to me and my people?" And he comes up with a plan. He's like, "What's a weapon of mass destruction? What can I do to put distance between these people and their powerful god?" And so he hires a mercenary. He hires a spiritual mercenary whose name is Balaam. And Balaam's task is to pronounce a curse on Israel to turn their own god against them.

Now the fascinating thing about this story is that nobody who's in Israel at the time knew what was going on. Everything in this chapter that we just read is happening behind the scenes. Moses, the people are not aware of all this stuff going on with Balaam and Balak and God and a talking donkey. They're not aware of any of it. They don't know any of this is going on. This is all happening behind the scenes.

And this is how this applies—first lesson for us. Because there's something about modern people where we think what we see is all that there is. We think what we see, what we can read about, what we can measure—that's all there is to life. And one of the first things we see in this passage is this: there's a real dark lord. There's a real dark lord, Satan, who is at work in this world.

Now some people might dismiss that today and say, "That's crazy, that's superstitious, that stuff—just you silly Christians believe." But which is more naive? Looking at the events of this world, looking at all the really hard and horrible things that happen in this world. Is it naive to believe there's nothing out there that's a real evil force at work in the world or to believe there is a real evil force in the world?

You know, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus show us the same thing. Satan appears in the story. You remember one of Jesus's disciples whose name was Judas. It says in Luke 22 that Satan convinces Judas to help betray Jesus. Now, a lot of us have seen too many movies and you picture Satan kind of taking over Judas in some way and making him do things he didn't want to do. This isn't the case. Satan uses Judas to do the things that Judas wanted to do for Satan's own ends.

And what happens in the story? Good Friday, we see Jesus who's bound and taken to the religious authorities, who's crucified and put on the cross and it looks like the death of God. It looks like the end of the story. Even the disciples flee in fear. And yet what looks like the low point is actually the beginning of what is a whole new way—Easter Sunday, right?

The triumph of the Son of God even over those forces of Satan and evil in this world. Over the real dark lord. But here's the warning for us: if you don't believe that there's a spiritual evil force in this world and your hope is not in Jesus, you have no protection from him. He's real, he's at work in the world, and only in Christ is there safety from that.

The Blind Seer

So that's the dark lord. Second, the blind seer. Balaam of course is the blind seer, and Balaam doesn't fit the categories that we think in. We think of categories as a person who believes in Jesus or doesn't, and Balaam sort of doesn't fit in either one of those. Balaam is a spiritual mercenary and he's hired by the king in order to curse Israel.

Now, just so you know that I'm not making this up and this is not some kind of fairy tale from the Bible, I want to show you this. This is a document that was found in 1967 in Jordan. It's called the Deir Alla manuscript, and it mentions by name "this one seer of the gods Balaam son of Beor." Again, this is a picture from outside the Bible. I know you can't read this, and I can't either. So I can't tell you where it is in the document. But what's fascinating about that document is not only that it tells us from another source that, yeah, this happened, but it's the way it describes Balaam. It describes Balaam not as a magician or a sorcerer but a seer—one who can see the spirit world, one who can see the gods and have something to do with manipulating and controlling the gods.

So here's how that worked. In that time, people would hire somebody like Balaam to do something called divination, and that could involve several things. They would take a bunch of arrows, like a bow and arrow, throw them up in the air, let them fall on the ground, and the seer would read the pattern and say, "Oh, here's what's going to happen." Or they would take a dead animal and cut it open and read the guts on the inside and say, "The entrails here tell us the story of what's gonna happen." So this is what Balaam's job was. Balak hires him to come and curse the Israelites.

Now, there's plenty of this in our world today and of course there's a lot of fakery around it, but there is a world of the occult that is for real. I've been to Haiti years ago and I remember hearing the voodoo drums in the background where people are trying to get in touch with the dead, trying to channel the dead. Sometimes people get confused about Balaam. It's not that this guy is just a complete fake. He's doing something that's for real that does have some connection with the spirit world.

Now it's easy to look at this guy, Balaam, and say, "Well, maybe he's actually a believer." In fact, we see that he uses the name Yahweh instead of Elohim, which kind of makes sense if you know he's a spiritual mercenary. Of course he would call in the name of the gods of the people that he's trying to curse and turn against them. But it also sounds like Balaam is a good guy. You hear him say things like this: "I am only able to do what God tells me to do. I can only say what God tells me to say." But Balaam is not honest in any of his dealings with Balak, and you can see why God is against him in this passage.

So the first time when the people from Balak, the king, come to Balaam and they say, "We're gonna hire you. Would you go curse the Israelites?" Balaam says, "Let me go ask God. Let me go ask the God of Israel, Yahweh, what to do?" And God is really, really clear in this passage. God says two things: one, don't go. Two, you can't curse the people I've blessed. It's not going to work.

So Balaam comes back to the envoys, the people who brought the money, and he says something that's not exactly the same as what God told Balaam. He said, "Well, I can't go right now. I can't go right now. Wait, let's see what God says." And so they go back. It's like a game of telephone, you know? One person says something, they tell the next person, they tell the next person—it's like whisper down the line. That's what's happening in this story.

So they come back again with higher-ranking officials and more money this time, and they say, "Now, Balaam, we're going to pay you this. Will you go and curse the Israelites?" And Balaam's like, "Let me go ask God again." Why does he say that? There's nothing unclear in God's instruction about this. But he comes back and he says, "Well, I tell you what: I can't do anything, even if you were to give me lots of gold and silver, I still couldn't curse the Israelites."

Now, what's he doing in that? He's asking for his payment. He's saying, "Here's my price." It'd be like somebody saying, "I can't do this, but even if you gave me a townhouse and a Lexus GX all painted black with tinted windows—you know, the really nice SUV—I couldn't do it even if you gave me that particular townhouse and that particular car." He's naming his price.

This is not a man who's actually representing God but trying to manipulate things for his own ends. This is why God is angry with Balaam and finally says, "You can go. You can go." If you're going to do it anyway, go on. God is not changing his mind. He's not commanding Balaam to go. This is why God is angry and seems angry in this passage with Balaam going to curse, and God says to him, "You have it your way, but you can only say what I tell you to say."

God's Gentleness and Human Choice

Now, again, this is a connection to Easter. This is where this connects with Easter. We see again that God is a gentleman. God doesn't force people to do the things they don't want to do. Remember, when the Israelites came to the edge of the promised land and they said, "We don't want to go in," God doesn't make them go in. They choose to go and wander in the wilderness for an additional period of time. God says it's going to be forty years, but they're the ones who make that choice.

And again here, Balaam says, "I want to go," and God doesn't stop him and lets him go. And it's really helpful for us because this is what God is saying to Balaam in effect: "Balaam, how long is it going to be before you open your eyes to what's right here and real in front of you? That there's a real God really at work in this world. How long is it going to be till you see this?"

And I would venture to guess that's what's going on in the lives of many people, including many people in this room, where God is putting things in front of us to get our attention and saying, "Hey, how long is it going to be before you see what's really real right in front of you?" That's the blind seer.

The Talking Donkey

Finally, the talking donkey. I know some of you all have been like, "Yes, this is the part we definitely need to talk about. What is the deal with the talking donkey?"

I don't know about you, but I can't read this ever without thinking of Eddie Murphy and Shrek. I can't hear this without hearing Eddie Murphy's voice in the donkey's mouth.

Now, there's an old preaching adage that goes like this: "If God can speak through Balaam's donkey, he can speak through you." Referring to what I'm doing right now this morning. If God can speak to Balaam's donkey, then God could speak through you. Of course, that's a funny statement, but that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is not what Balaam's donkey says but what Balaam's donkey sees.

What does Balaam's donkey see? She sees what Balaam doesn't. He's a blind seer. He can't actually see. And in Hebrew, this is funny because the pagan who's supposed to be able to see everything, who can bless and it always happens or curse and it always happens, he can't even see that there's an angel in the pathway with a sword drawn.

And here's the funny part: when the donkey turns and talks to Balaam, he doesn't say, "Wait a second, you can talk?" I'm always struck by how he doesn't even seem surprised that the donkey starts talking to him. In fact, what does Balaam say to the donkey? The donkey says, "I'm your donkey. You've ridden me all these years. I've always been good to you," and Balaam's like, "Oh, my bad."

Now, I know that it's super difficult for modern people like us to believe that a donkey can talk. This is not in our experience. And I just want to push on you a little bit today, of all days, because we gather here this Sunday and every Sunday around the central fact of history: that Jesus is raised from the dead. That Jesus became undead. That doesn't happen, people. And if it's hard for you to believe in a talking donkey, I just want to remind you that it's really hard to believe in the coming undead of Jesus.

The Easter Warning

Here's the Easter warning that we hear in this passage. This donkey is telling us the reason behind why there's a Good Friday and why there's an Easter Sunday.

What does the donkey see? He sees an angel, and not just any angel, an angel with a what? A sword. Balaam says in this passage three times he beats the donkey because the donkey is not obeying him. Three times he beats the donkey and he finally says, "Man, I wish I had a sword because I would kill this donkey right now."

What Balaam doesn't see is that he's the one in danger. He's the one in danger. The donkey sees what he doesn't.

You know, all the miracles in the Bible, every time that God suspends the laws of nature in order to do something, they're not called tricks, they're called signs. Now, if you're driving down the highway and you see a sign, what do you do with a sign? You read the sign.

Signs and Judgment

The miracles of the Bible are not tricks—not like God trying to wow people with magic. All the miracles of the Bible are disruptions to the normal way that nature works in order for people to understand something. They're signs to read, and in this passage, the sign is really clear. God speaks through the donkey to help Balaam see something he couldn't.

And that's the same thing that's true for every person: we are all sinners who stand in the way of judgment for our sin. All of us deserve death for sin. In reality, just like Balaam wants a sword to kill his donkey, Balaam is about to be killed with a sword that he can't even see. Judgment stands over him, and this is how all sinners are. All of us are blind to the reality that destruction and hell and judgment await us—unless we're people who put our trust in God.

You see what Balaam does in this passage. What does he say? He turns and finally says:

I have sinned, for I did not know you were standing in the path that confronts me. And now, if it is evil in your sight, I'll go back.

He's saying, "I'm going to turn around and I'm going to submit myself to you." And this is the calling for all of you this morning. If you have not submitted yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, you also stand under God's judgment—just like Balaam did with the angel with the sword. It's that precarious for us.

Will you take a moment this morning to second guess yourself? We're people who are so convinced that we see all of reality and know everything that's going on. But one of the major themes of the Bible is to have a little bit of self-doubt—a little bit of second-guessing your own interpretation of the world, that everything works exactly as you see it and perceive it. This isn't the reality. We're people who stand in judgment, and we need a savior. That's what the Bible holds out for us.

The Chicago Cubs and the Curse

We've looked at the dark lord, the blind seer, the talking donkey, and finally, the Chicago Cubs.

Why the Chicago Cubs? Why bring them up? Because the Chicago Cubs embody for us what in our culture is maybe our only experience with the word curse. We don't know of curses. People don't curse people out there very much anymore. We don't do that kind of thing. So let's talk about the curse on the Chicago Cubs.

The Curse of the Billy Goat is a sports curse that was placed upon the Chicago Cubs in 1945. There was a Billy Goat Tavern owner named William Sianis. He was at the playoff series when the Chicago Cubs were playing the Detroit Tigers, and he had his goat with him—I'm not kidding, in the stands. He had his goat with him, and the goat was bothering people. There were complaints, so he got thrown out of the game with his goat. And as he's being thrown out, this is the curse that he pronounces. This is what he allegedly declared:

"Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more."

And for seventy-one years, the Chicago Cubs never won a World Series—not until 2016. This was the Curse of the Billy Goat, and it remained in effect for all of Sianis' life.

Now, blessing and cursing—those aren't words we use much except in sports, like "this team seems cursed." But for the first Hebrew people hearing this, when they heard blessing and curse, they thought of one person. One person in the Bible. In fact, this passage has a billion hyperlinks back to an old story way back in the book of Genesis, chapter 21—a man named Abraham.

Abraham and Balaam: Parallels of Blessing and Curse

He's asked by God to go and sacrifice his son, his one and only son. So here are the parallels in case you're curious about this: Both Abraham and Balaam are told to get up and go on a journey, and it says the exact same language: "they got up and they saddled their donkey and they went." Both Abraham and Balaam take two young men with them—Abraham takes his son and a servant, Balaam takes two apprentices.

But Abraham and Balaam are stopped in the middle of an action by an angel. Remember, Abraham is about to sacrifice. He raises the knife. He's about to sacrifice Isaac, and an angel stops him. Here, an angel with a sword stops Balaam in his tracks three times.

Both Abraham and Balaam are motivated by what they love the most. Abraham brings his one and only son—the thing he loves more than anything—and lays his son on the altar for God. Balaam, who loves money, gold, silver—that's what he's motivated by in this passage.

Both Abraham and Balaam have miraculous provision in the form of an animal. In Abraham's story, it was provision of a ram that appears in the thicket: "Sacrifice this, not your son." In the story of Balaam, it's a talking donkey.

Both men's stories are about blessing and cursing. Four times in this passage, Balaam is instructed by Balak to go and curse Israel.

Four times in the book of Genesis, the blessing of God is pronounced over Abraham. And of Balaam, it was said by Balak, "Those you bless are blessed, those who you curse are cursed." But God says over Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you." This passage isn't about a sacrifice of his son, but it's all about blessing and cursing. So the original writer or readers of this would have been like, "Abraham—this guy Balaam is like the anti-Abraham." And you know, every time Balaam stands up in the story to try to curse Israel, all he's able to do is fulfill what was promised to Abraham: blessing on God's people. Four blessings.

We're not going to read through these, but I just want to highlight them for you in case you want to read them. These are in Numbers 23 and 24. The first one—Balaam gets up on this hillside and he's ready to curse Israel, and the only thing he can say is, "Wow, Moab will never defeat this people. They're blessed by God." The second time he's brought to another place ready to curse the people, and as he opens his mouth to utter a curse on God's people, what does he say? "They're going to have a king and it's going to be glorious." The third time he gets up to open his mouth and curse the people of Israel, it reads like the love letter of God over Israel. It's this statement of incredible love. "Israel is so beautiful to me." It's just this incredible display over and over again of God's commitment.

Here's what I want to give you this morning by way of closing: four applications for your life of God's blessing on you. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, this is what is true about you.

First Application: God's Blessing Cannot Be Taken Away

The blessing of God is a blessing that nobody can take away. Nothing can remove it. You can't lose it. The blessing from God is not just words. It's not just wishes. These are God's promises that will never go away and they will never fail. When God speaks in the Bible, it's not like people speak. The guy I mentioned, William Cianus from who had the tavern and tried to curse the Chicago Cubs—those were just words. That's just superstition and people kind of buy in and believe that over the years, but there's no power in that. There's actually no power in Balaam's words either. What's really powerful are the words and promises of God.

The words and promises of God are written in blood over your life. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the cross guarantees the blood of God himself is the security behind every promise he says over you. "I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you. You can't send away my love." The commitment and the blessing God has on his people, you can never lose.

Second Application: God's Blessing Cannot Be Earned

The blessing from God is something you can't earn, you can't merit, you can't buy. Remember Balak, the dark lord of Numbers 22. He's trying to pay Balaam to come and curse the people, and he can't even do it. Balaam is trying to get paid to come and curse the people. This is how so many people think God works. People think that if I do good things, God blesses me. If I do bad things, God curses me. But that's not what we see in the Bible.

In the Bible, God is not like a vending machine where you put in some money and out comes blessings in your life. What we rather see in the Bible is that God's love, his kindness, his goodness is not for sale. You can't earn it, you can't merit it, you can't buy it. Instead, what do we read? God is a God of unmerited favor. He's incredibly generous. He's incredibly kind. These oracles read like a love song to Israel and a love song over you.

The Lord your God is among you. He is a warrior mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you in his love. He will delight over you with singing. — Zephaniah 3

Can you imagine God singing over you? This is the heart of God toward his people. This is the very definition of the character of God. God's blessing on your life is not something you can earn, just like you can never lose it. It's entirely of grace in your life.

Third Application: No One Can Curse What God Has Blessed

No one can curse what God has blessed. The devil can't curse you. The example of Balaam shows that there's no witchcraft, no divination, no curses—nothing that someone could put on your life if God has blessed you. If you are his, if you are in Christ, you are safe, you are secure, you're protected, you're sealed in the blood.

You know, the power of that divine protection—hard things may come to your life, but they come through the fingers of God. You are in his hand and no one can take you out of his hand. Nothing can come into your life that's not absolutely under his sovereign control. It's that powerful and it's that absolute, and you need to hear this: there's nothing that somebody else could pronounce over your life, curse you in any way, that can have power over you.

Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

God is in charge of you.

The Blessing of God Is God Himself

And finally this—the blessing of God from God isn't actually the blessing. It's not a blessing like we use blessing today. We use "blessed," right? Picture of family on the beach. Hashtag blessed. Family all wearing denim shirts and khaki pants. Hashtag blessed. You got your morning coffee and your Bible open up. Hashtag blessed. Like, every time we talk about blessings, we always use that in the plural because we're thinking about stuff. But that's not primarily how the Bible refers to blessing.

We've talked about this a couple weeks ago. Number six—there's a blessing I pronounce over you every Sunday as we've gone through this series:

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Because you know why? Because the blessing of God is God. The blessing of God is God himself. It's not his stuff. That is so secondary. It is God himself.

This is how we talk about blessings actually. When people talk about the blessing of friendship, are they referring to the institution of friendship? No, they're referring to their friend. The blessing of friendship is their friend. When married people talk about the blessing of marriage, they're not talking about the institution of marriage like, "I'm so blessed I have a certificate of marriage." They're talking about how much they love their wife or their husband. When we talk about the blessing of children, we're not talking about how awesome it is to get up in the middle of the night with a kid who's throwing up. We're not talking about the institution of being a parent. We're talking about how much you love your freaking kid.

And that's how we read scripture. The blessing of God is God.

Do you know that's actually the content of Balaam's last curse that turns into a blessing on Israel? You know what he prophesies? This is the last of the promises. Listen closely:

I see him but not now. I perceive him but not near. A star will come up from Jacob and a scepter will arise from Israel.

Who's he talking about? Jesus. The early church, a couple years after Jesus died, was going back and rereading the Old Testament, understanding all the places that Jesus showed up. And this was one of their favorites. They're like, holy cow, this pagan blind seer from somewhere else comes and prophesies about our Jesus? Where does a star appear in the East? Where does it come to rest over Bethlehem? Over the one who's born to be a king, who's born to lay down his life on a cross and be raised to eternal life, enthroned on high.

Jesus was born to reverse the curse over you. He was born to reverse the curse—the curse that goes all the way back to creation, to that story in Genesis chapter three where after the fall, a curse is pronounced on all humanity.

And you know, when we sing around Christmas time, one of my favorite verses is in "Joy to the World." We always sing this verse:

No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found—far as the curse is found—far as far as the curse is found.

In every place where there's cursing in this world as a residue of sin, even more so the grace of God, the blessing of God. Jesus came to reverse the curse over your life, over this world. And what is here in a very rudimentary beginning way at Easter will come to be in its fullness. He came to secure forever the blessing of God on his people. His cross is the guarantee in blood over your life. This is the entire disposition of God toward you—to sing over you, to delight over you.

You are blessed in Christ, and nothing can take that away. Nothing can change that. Nothing can erode that. You are forever his, and his empty tomb and his ascension into heaven means that his Spirit is given to you as a permanent possession. You have him. You have him. Jesus—he's the true GOAT, right? Greatest of all time. The true GOAT.

If you have Jesus, you have God's blessings forever, permanently, immutably, forever. It's a blessing nothing can take away. You're like MC Hammer, can't touch this, right? This is how God is toward us. This is the disposition of God toward us.

Brothers and sisters, the tomb is empty. Death is on death watch. Our enemy is here, but it's like a dog on a chain. He can bark, he can make a lot of noise, he can't bite you. Jesus has authority over the ruler of this world. He has no power over the children of God. Can't touch this.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. Your word tells us things that are behind the scenes that we can't see or touch or experience. It's hard for us even to connect our hearts with this. Father, we pray that you would give us power by your Spirit to believe what is more real than what we can see—that you have blessed us in Christ and nothing can change that. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand and respond to God's word together.