Whatever blessing comes to God’s people is ultimately not on account of his covenant people’s obedience. It is only the mercy and compassion of God that can give them a future rest, and an enjoyment of his presence. And that leads us to Christ. It’s in Christ that God is with his people most clearly. Christ is Immanuel, God with us. In him, God comes to dwell with his people. Yet his own people rejected him. The darkness of the time of the judges continued. They didn’t want the true king. But through that very rejection, God’s love and grace were magnified. Sin took on its ugliest form at the crucifixion of Immanuel, and yet God’s love and grace were seen in their purest form at that crucifixion. And then afterwards, God’s love and grace went beyond the land of Israel, to the Gentiles. To people much like the Kenites, Caleb, Othniel, and Achsah, non-Israelites. Gentiles. God’s grace has come to the nations, in his call to serve him, to journey to their heavenly home, just as those Kenites and the others were invited to travel to the Promised Land with God’s people.

Whatever blessing comes to us is ultimately not on account of our obedience, but the obedience of Christ. We partake of that obedience by faith. We thrive not when we base our walk with God on our own strategies or inclinations, but when we put our faith in God and his strength, his wisdom, his promise to be with us. Blessing comes by way of being in Christ by faith.