Part 2: Blessed Or #blessed? Series

Blessed Broken Given, Week 2: Blessed vs. #Blessed

Genesis 1; Matthew 5

Good morning. I’d like you to have your Bibles open to two different places. (Weird, I know). The first place will be Genesis 1. Then, I’d like you to put a bookmark in Matthew 5.

We are continuing the series we started last week, called Blessed, Broken, Given. The organization of the series comes from a book by Glenn Packiam. But the title comes from the pattern we see in Scripture, particularly in the gospel of Luke, of what happened every time Jesus had bread in His hands: He blessed it, broke it, and gave it. We spent a lot of time last week on how when we put our lives in the hands of Jesus, He will bless us, break us, and give us to the world.

So today, we’re going to talk about the word ‘blessed’.

Imagine that an alien were to land on our planet and observe how we use the word, ‘Blessed’ and determine it’s meaning solely by how it is used on social media. First off, this alien would be confused about how to spell the word, because everywhere you see it on social media, it’s #blessed, not just blessed.

From there, the alien would start to look at all our facebook posts, Pinterest walls, and Instagram feeds. And his conclusion would be that #blessed means living the good life. Sipping an artisan coffee or a craft brew in a remodeled kitchen that opens out onto a patio overlooking a Key West sunset as you hold hands with your supermodel wife, while your children frolic in the surf with your purebred designer dog.

Sometimes when you search #blessed, the results are just weird. Like this one [snake skeleton picture] You may not be able to read the caption, but it’s someone who was super excited to find a framed snake skeleton at goodwill for $4.98. “I love snakes… I love skeletons… so, #blessed.

But that has nearly nothing to do with what the Bible means by blessed. Many of the things we associate with a blessed life—health, provision, beauty, and more—are, of course, gifts from God. But they are just hints and shadows of the real and true blessedness. Like the song Blessed Assurance—they are just a foretaste of glory divine.

When the Bible talks about being blessed, what does it mean? Let’s get an Old Testament answer and a New Testament answer.

In the Old Testament, the word blessed first shows up in Genesis 1. Here, you see the first three of over two hundred times the word blessed is used in the Old Testament. The word is “barak,” and it means “to endow with power for success, prosperity, longevity, etc.”

Look at it with me: When God created the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, verse 22 says,

22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

There it is: first use of blessed. Skip down to verse 28. After God creates human beings, verse 28 says,

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God says the same thing to human beings that he says to birds and sea creatures, but with one HUGE difference. God gives us a job to do. Take care of my creation. Have dominion over every living thing.

The word blessed shows up just one more time in the creation story. We’ll look at the last part of Chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2:

31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

So, the only other thing God blesses in the creation story is the Sabbath. And because God blessed the seventh day and rested on it, His people understood, even before the Ten Commandments, that the seventh day was to be a special, sacred day of rest.

Here’s why this matters: The Genesis account of creation isn’t the only creation story from ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians had their creation story, too. In it, the god of heaven, An, falls in love with Ki, the god of the earth, and he creates humans as a kind of wedding present for Ki, so that they will serve her and keep her from having to work.