Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH

Sermon text today is found in Numbers 6:22-27. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Numbers chapter 6 beginning at verse 22. The Lord spake unto Moses saying, “Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise he shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace, and they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this portion of scripture, and we pray now that your Holy Spirit would illuminate this text for understanding that we may go forth from this place transformed by the power of your word in spirit through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ our savior. We pray in his name. Amen. Please be seated.

Mark Twain once said that deep down, no man much respects himself. Man is conscious of his guilt before God. And as much as the ungodly suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness, yet deep down in the center of his being, he is aware through the providence of God, through the judgments of God, of his fallen nature.

This statement by Mark Twain, “No man much respects himself,” is particularly true, I think, of those who are assembled together in the worship of God. Through the merits of Jesus Christ sounds a little bit odd, but you know to us the Lord God is removing the self-deception that says that we’re okay through his word. He’s cutting us down and yet he’s also remaking us in the image of Christ. So we have a great awareness week by week, day by day, and year by year of our own sinfulness, and it is a continual test of God’s justification by faith to know that we are indeed blessed by him.

I’m going to talk today on the Aaronic benediction. A-A-R-O-N-I-C. In other words, the benediction that was given by God through Moses to Aaron and his sons that concludes typically the synaxis or first portion of our worship service. We, I think, nearly always use this particular benediction. The church has been using it for thousands of years. And it seems like it’s a very important part of our worship service. This particular benediction sort of culminates the first portion of our worship, and frequently the whole worship as we move communion into this portion of our service on occasion.

Other benedictions are used at the conclusion of the communion time, but they all really are kind of encapsulated in this benediction given in Numbers chapter 6. And there’s a sense in which, you know, the conclusion of a matter is really sort of the culmination of it and the purpose of a matter. So, as we gather together to worship God, why are we here? What is the point? And what is the result of all this?

And it seems like the benediction is the capstone to what we do. And it is an action in which we are passive before God. The benediction is not a prayer. It is, as Jeff Meyers said, a performative utterance. A performative utterance. And when you rise for the benediction, you know, it’s not the time to be straightening your papers up and getting ready to go or starting to fold your chair up or walking or looking around while the benediction is being pronounced.

It’s not a time to close your eyes and pray. It is not a prayer. It is a statement by the officiant of worship and in that statement God has promised with that statement to bless his people. And when the hand or hands are raised to pronounce the benediction, you should think in terms of God’s hand of blessing being upon you. We want to deal today with this particular text then and look at it as a very important element of what we do when we come together on the Lord’s day and the way God sends us forth in his blessing and benediction.

Just by way of comment, this text is also a very useful text. It has been since 1986 used to combat some elements of higher criticism. In 1986 a couple of very small scrolls were found in a silver amulet in a particular excavation. This excavation site dated from between 900 BC and 586 BC when the temple was destroyed. And so it’s a very old site. And in this digging in ’86, they found this portion of scripture on a tiny little scroll.

It was written in ancient Hebrew letters. The letters that would have been used in the writing of the Pentateuch itself by Moses, not the more modern form of Hebrew used in later portions of time. This particular portion of scripture that we just read, the Aaronic benediction, is at least I believe it’s the oldest extant piece of manuscript that we have from the Bible. It predates the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And the importance of that is this. The higher critics have said that this term Yahweh, which is repeated three times in the context of the benediction, wasn’t used until the time of Ezekiel and later, and was in the post-exilic time from 500 BC on. And yet this ancient Hebrew writing and the dig and all the evidence is that it’s from at least 600 or 700 BC, maybe as early as 900 BC, that they have this piece of text.

Archaeology always bears out the truths of the scriptures and confounds the opponents of God’s word. So let’s attend to this piece of the scriptures that is a verification of God’s inspiration of the scriptures and writing through Moses, not through a collection of other men who made things up. And also this text is probably some of the earliest poetry we have, and certainly in the scriptures we could go back to Adam’s song and song of delight over his wife, but this Aaronic benediction is set in a poetical form and is useful to us for that purpose as well to see the kind of things that God instructs us in terms of his poetry.

Okay. And what we want to talk about here, I’ve kind of summarized for you at the top of your outlines, and what we’ll do is just simply work our way through this statement. The statement is that the Aaronic benediction is a torrent of blessing from the triune God through his appointed representatives linking his people from worship to life and preparing them for battle and for victory.

And in the providence of God, I wasn’t going to be preaching today, but this is what we’re going to do. And I thought as we move toward the end of this last millennium and into the current one we’re in, I thought sometime in this segue period, I wanted to talk on the benediction. Again, I gave essentially the same sermon 10 years ago, but I thought that as we move into the new year, it’s important to do so with an understanding of God’s sovereign grace blessing us as we stand passive essentially before his face to receive the blessing of benediction at the end of worship.

Okay. So, first of all, what this benediction is—it’s a torrent of blessing. And I’ve given you some notes on your outlines about the structure of this particular benediction. There are 15 words in this benediction in the Hebrew text and some commentators have correlated these to the 15 psalms of ascent that we’ve been working our way through in the context of the responsive reading. And some people think that the 15 psalms of ascent are actually sort of expositions of these 15 Hebrew words that are contained in the Aaronic benediction.

And there is that much content to it. We could spend 15 sermons correlating these words to the psalms of ascent but we won’t do that. But we do want to notice the structure of this text before we move on into the actual content of the text. The first line here has three Hebrew words in it. The second line has five Hebrew words in it. And the third line has seven Hebrew words in it. So you see this kind of crescendo from 3 to 5 to 7.

Additionally, there are in the Hebrew text a progression in the number of syllables in each line. It goes from 12 syllables to 14 to 16. And additionally, there’s a progression in the number of letters or consonants in the Hebrew text as well. The first line has 15 consonants, the second line 20, and the third 25. And so you see this kind of building crescendo that God and his sovereign grace has determined the Hebrew text to be written in.

As you hear that benediction, every time you should think about this torrent that comes forth that builds with each line as it moves through this particular three-line poem. This crescendo of effect is also seen in kind of a crescendo in terms of the actions of God and then the results of those actions is another way to look at how the Aaronic benediction moves ahead.

There are three occurrences in each line of the name Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel. And if you take the 15 total words and remove the three lines that are designating Yahweh, you end up with 12 Hebrew words which correlates to the 12 tribes receiving this benediction. And so there’s that kind of unity and diversity in it as well. And there is, as it were, a cresting wave of God’s actions and the result of those actions in the text as well.

God does this and it results in this. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. So there’s these actions of God and then the result of the action to us. His blessing produces a guarding aspect of us—the Lord keeps us. And the Lord makes his face shine upon us to the extent that he is gracious to us, and he lifts up his countenance to us, and the result of that is peace.

So you almost have kind of a wave-like fashion here, each wave getting higher in terms of length of words, syllables, and consonants, and also in terms of the action of God. God blessing, God shining his face upon you, and then the Lord liftly lifting up his countenance to you, and the end result of that is peace. So you don’t get to peace till the end of this crescendo of blessing, but that’s what the culmination is—peace.

There’s a song by a guy named Van Morrison where he’s got this long song about going back to his memories as a child, and it goes on for I don’t know—it seems like maybe 10 minutes or something—and at the very end of it he’s kind of whispering and the last word he says (and he doesn’t say it through the entire song till the end) is the word “blessing.” You see, he’s a poet and he knows that you can use poetry to build up to a concept. And actually he builds down in volume to the end, where he’s going back to the peace of his youth and the blessing that he received from God then. And this benediction is that kind of poem. It builds to this height of peace.

So in and of itself, the literary structure of this benediction is a wonderful thing to consider. And it is a steadily increasing flow of blessing that is poured over the people of God. So says Nahum Sarna, one of the commentators on this text that I consulted in its writing. So we have this torrent that comes forth from the throne of God and this torrent is a torrent of blessing.

And this blessing begins with the presence of God. So moving on to Roman numeral 2 of your outline. This is a torrent of blessing upon us. It’s not a torrent of curse, but a torrent of blessing. And that blessing, first of all, is that God’s presence himself. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. It is the Lord who is behind this action. He is the one who is performing this action, even while it’s given through his appointed representatives. It’s the presence of God.

And the first thing that God does to us in this presence of the benediction is to bless us. This idea of blessing has connected to it historically in the scriptures, not historically but in terms of summary fashion in the scriptures, the idea of productivity and also the idea of identification with God in a new name. Nahum Sarna in his commentary again says the blessing. What this means is it contains the idea that by means of a formal series of words something is actually introduced into a person’s life center which can either hinder or promote the unfolding of life.

Barak, the Hebrew term, is thus the act of inspiring or rather imputing or imparting the blessing from God—the force from which the fullness of life springs and which enables one to perform a whole variety of tasks. So the idea of blessing is that God, in whom is all blessing and life, produces or sends forth to us from his storehouse of blessing and life, blessing and life to us so that we’re empowered to grow and to nurture and be guarded by him.

So the substance of this blessing comes from the very person of God. John Calvin said that the blessing of God is the goodness of God in action toward us. The blessing of God is the goodness of God in action toward us by which a supply of all good pours down to us from his favor as from its only fountain. This is the blessing of God upon us pronounced in the benediction.

Again here, as Calvin’s statement says, we have the idea of source. The blessing comes from the source, and the source of course is the God whose presence comes to us in that blessing. Lang said that this blessing means to direct. He will direct upon us all prosperity in immeasurable progression. So the presence of God in effecting this blessing for us—this blessing is, first of all, a nourishing blessing. It produces in its nourishment production. It produces as well an identity for us, and it produces a sense of calling to exercise dominion.

God blesses the created order, and the other place where the word blessing is most commonly used is in the context of the blessings of the covenant. So when we think of blessings themselves, this “bless us” is in the context of the creation originally and then in the context of the covenant as well. And you can see that this blessing produces this nourishing effect of God’s life given to his creatures in the context of the worship service through the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The first reference of blessings is, as I said, contained in the opening chapters of Genesis, and we’re told be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth. And then the idea is that man’s blessing is to the end that he subdues the earth and exercises dominion under God. Again, when Abraham is blessed, he’s blessed with the idea of productivity in his blessing. Abraham will become a great nation as a result of the blessings of God.

Jacob, in the third blessing given to him in Genesis 35:9-12, gets the command in the context of that blessing to be fruitful, to be faithful and multiply, and a nation shall come forth from Jacob. So this idea of blessing being connected to the idea of nurture, the idea of productivity, the idea that God’s blessing comes upon us to make us productive, that we multiply and indeed have an effect in the earth.

Secondly, this presence of God and nurturing is seen in the context of identity. As Abram and Sarai received the blessing from God, they receive new names. Adam was named in the context of being blessed by God. Our name implies a calling, a responsibility to do certain things and not do others. Essentially, the blessing of identity or a name is a call to exercise dominion so that life and blessing might flow in the context of the created order.

The naming implies the covenant that’s made which issues forth from the grace of God and his blessings. We are named by the Master. We’re named by the Creator as his creatures. We are named by the Sovereign God who brings us into relationship to him, and he gives us a new name. The book of Revelation says our new name corporately as Christians or as Christbearers. We have a new name or a new identity through the context of God’s blessing upon us.

You’ll remember that this text tells us that Aaron is to produce this blessing or pronounce it rather upon the sons of Israel. And the very fact that it references the sons of Israel is a reference to the idea that the blessing involves identity or naming. You remember that Jacob wrestling with God at Peniel all night asks for a blessing. And the blessing that Jacob receives from God is a new name. He’s given the name of Israel.

So this connection between blessing and identity, who we are, is very strong in the context of the scriptures. And when we receive the Aaronic benediction, we should think in terms of the presence of God producing blessing, which means productivity, and it means a new identity in the context of the covenant of grace as well. Again, in the blessing of Jacob in Genesis 35:9-12, God stresses his new name of Israel. He is ruled by God. That’s what Israel means, and it also means he will rule for God. So the blessing of God in the Aaronic benediction is a torrent of blessings that produces in our understanding and transforms us into the new identity that we have in the person and work of Christ.

Third, this nurturing blessing of God results in a calling, a calling to exercise dominion. Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob all receive the call in the context of their blessings to exercise dominion for God in the context of the earth. It is in covenant and creation that man receives a name and identity and a calling and the blessing of the overflowing of the abundance of life from God in the context of his grace to us.

Now, of course, this has certain costs involved. Abraham’s final blessing occurs after he is tested in the matter of Isaac, when he shows that he is willing to give up all of life for the sake of the one who is life. Abraham was willing to surrender the blessing to God and therefore received more blessing from God. So there are obviously in the connection of the blessing implications for us.

But really the focal point of the blessing is that we’re standing passively before God at the end of the divine service. And the God of all creation and the God of covenant pronounces to us through his appointed representatives that we are blessed. It is a passive reception of that. Not as implications, as I’ve just said, but the focal point I want us to really take home today. At the end of this worship day together, when we come together to worship God, he is sovereignly blessing and transforming us in his grace.

You know, I’ve been preaching for a long number of years. Well, not long really in the sense of time, but you know, I’ve preached a lot of sermons. And sometimes I think, you know, if I give you three things to do every Sunday, at the end of the year you’ve got 150, 160 things you’re supposed to be doing. And I get concerned sometimes with the way I preach that somehow, you know, particularly as I’ve talked about this as we go through the law of the covenant, that you end up thinking that what worship is about is about getting instructions on what you have to do to change yourself.

That really is not what it is. Worship is about you coming together corporately in the presence of God to find at its culmination through the work of Christ that he has sovereignly blessed you. He has taken the initiative and produced a blessing upon you that makes you fruitful with a new identity, new calling in Christ, and his presence making you productive. But it is his service to you that is the focal point of worship. You come together to be assured of that fact.

You know, like Mark Twain said, at the center of your being, you know you’re a sinful person. And what you need to hear every Lord’s day is yes, you need to understand your sin, but you need to know that the God of creation and covenant is pouring forth unto you his blessings.

Now this blessing—this first line, “The Lord bless thee and keep thee”—and so now there’s the context as well that in that blessing we receive from God is a guarding that comes forth from him. And you’ll see here that this two-fold purpose of nurturing and guarding that we’re called to do in Adam is what God promises to us in the context of the benediction. He guards us or keeps us as well.

Luther, in speaking of the Aaronic benediction, he said that the first blessing is to bodily life and good. The blessing he says desired for the people that, quoting now from Luther, that God would give them prosperity, every good, and also guard them and preserve them. George Bush, the commentator in his 1858 commentary said this. The leading impact of blessing when spoken of the Lord is abundant increase and multiplication of good things both temporal and spiritual.

“The Lord bless thee and keep thee therefore is the equivalent to the Lord bestow upon thee plentifully the favors of his providence and his grace and kindly guard and preserve thee in the happy enjoyment of them.”

These blessings of God are very real. If we wanted to go through the texts of Deuteronomy 8 and 28, the concluding portions of Leviticus, we’d see that these blessings are put in very real and substantial material terms. And so in the context of the blessing of God, we don’t want to spiritualize it and somehow bring it out of this idea that permeates the concept of blessing—that it is a productive sort of concept that God makes you productive, gives you increase, and then guards and keeps you in the context of that increase.

Psalm 121 is really what people say can be seen as a commentary on God’s protection and care. Psalm 121 we read, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.”

You know, the psalmist begins with, “I’ll lift up mine eyes into the hills from whence cometh my help”—providence of God. This particular podium is well lifted up. You lift up your eyes to the hills, and at the end of the worship service, God pronounces the blessing upon you through his appointed representatives. And you then recognize, as this Psalm 121 is a commentary of that, the Lord will keep you as well as producing this great abundant flow of blessings to you.

So, first of all, this Aaronic benediction is the presence of God in terms of blessing and productivity. Nurturing. God’s presence. This nurturing involves nurturing, and it involves in that nurture a sense of productivity, a new identity, a new calling in Christ to exercise dominion, and the guarding grace of God to keep you in the context of those blessings that he pours out to you.

Now the second line of the benediction moves on from God’s presence to God’s pardon. “The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.” God’s face. God’s face is sunlight, shining with love, full of life and all good. I was listening to a Beach Boys DVD this last weekend. They were redoing with Willie Nelson an old song called “The Warmth of the Sun,” and about how, you know, it was written—I don’t know the context of Kennedy dying or something and one of them losing his girlfriend. I don’t know what it was. But the point was that you know, even though all these problems happen and I lose my girl, whatever, at night I have the warmth of the sun at night.

Well, the sun is a picture of the blessing of God. His face shines forth with warmth, blessing to his people. And if we change SUN to SON, that in spite of whatever darkness may be happening in the context of our lives, the Aaronic benediction is a reminder that God’s face shines upon us, that we have the warmth of the Sun, S-O-N, Jesus the Son, in the context of whatever darkness the Lord God has brought into our lives. God’s pardon is seen here because his face shines upon us, and be gracious unto thee. So there’s this connection between the face and light of God and the grace of God.

Psalm 27:1 reads that “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?” Psalm 43:3 says, “Send out thy light and thy truth. Let them teach me. Let them bring me unto thy holy hill into thy tabernacle.” Psalm 44:3 says, “Thy right hand and thine arm and the light of thy countenance. This is what has brought us favor.” And we read there in Psalm 80:3, “Turn us again, oh God, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.” Again, in Psalm 80:7, “Turn us again, oh God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.”

The face of God comes to us, and his face is one of warmth and blessing. Again, to quote from Bush here, “The Lord bless thee with the sensible effects of his favor, and visit thy soul with an influence like that of the sun upon the face of nature, cheering and enlivening it.”

So God comes to us and he shines upon us. The sunlight comes forth for the created order and responds to that sunlight with growth. And in the Aaronic benediction, the face of God is said to be shining upon us to make us fruitful, that we might bud forth and have the fruits of the spirit in the context of our lives.

Now, the basis for this is grace. “The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.” This blessing is all founded upon the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here we can sort of see, as I said, in this kind of crescendo or torrent of blessing a movement from these external blessings of productivity and dominion and calling to now the face of God being based upon the grace and pardon of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this right standing with God through the gracious actions of God in Christ is what’s stressed in this middle line.

The physical manifestations of a righteousness with God—without which these physical manifestations are shallow—is what’s spoken of in this second line. In other words, you can have a tremendous mansion on the hill, but if you don’t experience or understand or have poured upon you the grace of God in the context of forgiveness of your sins, then these external blessings, which are good and proper in their place, are shallow.

With an understanding of the grace of God and the warmth of the Lord Jesus Christ work on the cross for us, shining into our lives, then a cottage can become, as it were, a mansion. The difficulties we have in life, seen in the context of God’s grace to us in Christ, produce a tremendous sense of thanksgiving to him for the smallest of external benefits—with a sense of the indwelling grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives, a cottage becomes a mansion, as it were, in the context of our thankfulness and gratitude to God.

The Sovereign God loves and forgives us through the work of Christ, and as a result, this benediction and blessing pours forth into our life—God’s presence, God’s pardon, and then finally in the third line, the crescendo is God’s peace. “The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”

To lift up one’s face is to show special regard for that particular person that’s being lifted up to, as opposed to repeated references throughout the scriptures of God’s hiding his face from people. Now God lifts up his countenance upon you and he gives you peace. He has an uplifted countenance as it were as he looks upon his people. It’s as if the face of God shines forth in the order and then with particular care he looks upon them. He lifts up his countenance, and now the beaming forth of his life-giving energy and blessing from his presence and his pardoning grace comes forth and brings us to a state of peace.

Peace is the sum total of God’s presence and God’s good gifts to his people. If you’ve been here very long at all, you’ve heard us over and over again repeat that the idea of peace is not an absence of conflict. The idea of peace is the presence of God bringing all the blessings and manifestations of right standing with Christ in the context of that blessing.

Chris W. preached on this of course last week in last week’s sermon “Grace and Peace from God.” Romans 1:7 says, “to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints. Grace to you and peace from our God and father, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

It’s never peace and then grace. It’s the grace of God in the second line of the Aaronic benediction that produces the peace, the orderliness of God, God’s presence with his people found in the final crescending wave of blessings that flow forth in the context of this particular Aaronic benediction. So the content of the benediction is God’s presence, God’s pardon, and then God’s peace. As the ultimate, the penultimate, the great point to which the Aaronic benediction moves is the peace of God upon his people.

Now this Aaronic benediction brings this torrent of blessing from the triune God. Verse 27 says, “they shall put my name upon the children of Israel and I will bless them.” This is his blessing. This blessing is not coming ultimately from the Aaronic priesthood. It’s coming from the throne of God itself.

The Lord is the one who speaks in verse 22. “The Lord spake unto Moses.” And then he says, “They shall put my name upon the children of Israel.” And he guarantees, he provides the assurance that as this is done to his people who are faithful to him, he does indeed bless them. This comes from the triune God of scripture.

One of the New Testament benedictions, we see this triune aspect in big terms in 2 Corinthians 13:14. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen.”

But even in this Old Testament benediction, I mentioned that there was a three-fold occurrence of the name Yahweh in these three lines. Out of the 15 words, three of them are occurrences of Yahweh. Now, the Hebrew text was written all with consonants, no vowels. And oh, I don’t know, a little over a millennium ago—I think in the fifth or sixth century AD, perhaps maybe a little later—there was a group of Jews, the Masoretes, who put vowel points in the Old Testament to preserve the vowel pointing they’d been handed on by way of tradition. And so, you know, they had to sort of assume or understand where the vowels should be put in.

Well, in the providence of God, these guys pointed the three names—the three repeated names of Yahweh—differently each time. We don’t know why. Rabbinic commentators have wondered about this why Yahweh is pointed in three different ways in its three-fold occurrences. But it seems to us, of course, this side of the cross, this side of benediction such as 2 Corinthians 13, that clearly places the benediction in a triune fashion, that what’s going on here is the God who is one God and yet exists in three persons is seen as the source of this torrent of blessings that come upon us.

The love of God the Father is pointed out for, and the blessing from Corinthians through which we are preserved. The second, the love of God the Son whereby we have obtained and do obtain grace in the context of the second line of the benediction. And the third part is the love of the Holy Spirit whereby we obtain peace through the communion of him with us. So we see this torrent of blessings coming forth from the triune God of the scriptures.

Bush said, “the love of the everlasting Father, the grace of the incarnate Son, the comfort, teaching and communion of the Holy and Blessed Spirit, not as three gods, but as one God existing and viewed under a three-fold aspect.”

So this blessing is a triune blessing. Three lines, three separate pointings of the name Yahweh, all coming forth from the one God who exists in three persons. And that’s the blessing and benediction we receive at the conclusion of the worship service each Lord’s day.

This is through his appointed representatives. In verse 23, God tells Moses, “Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying on this wise, ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them.” And then God tells him what to say, and then assures us that as this is done, he will indeed move through these representatives. Various places of scripture repeat this same truth.

For instance, in Deuteronomy 21:5, “the priests, the sons of Levi shall come near for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried.” Again, in Deuteronomy 10:8, “At that time the Lord separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to minister unto him, and to bless in his name unto this day.”

And then in Leviticus 9:22, we read that “Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people and blessed them.” He came down from offering of the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offering. So, Leviticus 9. Those of you in the Sunday school class know that the context of that is the consecration of the Aaronic priesthood in chapter 8. And then in chapter 9, they do the work in the context of the offering the sacrifices. And at the conclusion of that work, as an essential part of that work that the priesthood were to perform, at a particular point, Aaron lifts his hand and pronounces the benediction upon the people.

So, we have God’s appointed representatives chosen here. And this is why in the church for 2,000 years, it is seen as particularly the function of the pastors or the elders of the church to pronounce the benediction at the conclusion of the worship service. God works through representatives.

Now, having said that, we don’t want to get the idea that this is magic somehow. One of the first recorded blessings of one person to another is Isaac to Jacob. And Isaac, of course, thought he was blessing Esau. So, he attempted to manipulate the blessing of God by pronouncing it upon someone that he knew was not the proper recipient of the blessing. But God’s sovereignty, in spite of man’s perverseness, is seen in the fact that Jacob was still blessed.

The blessing doesn’t receive its merit from the person giving the benediction. Rather, the benediction is simply the affirmation of God’s blessing through his appointed representatives, but not to be equated with them or with them being the source of it. In other words, it’s not magic. We can’t produce what we want in terms of that benediction by blessing some people and not others. It’s simply the blessing of God working through his ordained representatives.

So God uses appointed representatives to minister in the context of the Aaronic benediction. In fact, it’s interesting if you look at tombstones of Jewish priests who pronounced the blessing, you can tell by looking at the tombstone whether or not he was a priest because if he was, there would be this pattern shown of his hands like this put together as one hand, as it were. That was the way that they would, at least for a period of time in the synagogues, bless the people. And that’s kind of argued about why that was. Some people think what they were actually doing was to take what was sort of seen as a mystical sign but instead put it in the context of the worship service to tell people that the only blessing you can get is through the blessing of God, apart from any particular representative.

So the representative is simply a conduit of God’s providence and his sovereignty in blessing or not blessing. The Lord Jesus Christ, of course, is the great high priest who comes to bring this benediction to us. And his last action on earth is of course blessing his disciples as he ascends into heaven. In Acts 3:26 we read that “unto you first God having raised up his son Jesus sent him Jesus to bless you in turning everyone away of you from his iniquities.”

And then in Luke 24:50, “he led them out as far as Bethany and he lifted up his hands and blessed them.”

So this blessing through God’s appointed representatives ultimately is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ pronouncing the benediction to his disciples as he is resurrected and ascends to the Father. And then, as I said, verse 27 gives us an assurance that God will use this mechanism to bless his people.

Matthew Henry commenting on this says that “the same that are God’s mouth to his people to teach and command them are his mouth likewise to bless them, and those that receive the law shall receive the blessing.”

So the idea here is that when you hear the words of, I believe it’s today Elder Wilson speaking the benediction to you, it’s really what you’re to be hearing is the voice of God himself using these words which were divinely ordained to pronounce the blessing upon God’s people. And as I said, the story of Isaac and Jacob is instructive to us to avoid the idea that somehow this is magical or mystical. It is mystical in a sense of a mystery, but it’s not magical.

It’s the blessing of God that comes forth independent, as it were, of the appointed representative, and yet working through him.

Now the placement of this particular benediction where it is in the book of Numbers helps us to see that this benediction is a torrent of blessings coming forth from God through his appointed representatives linking his people from worship to life. The book of Numbers has as its context the army of God being drawn together to go forth into the promised land.

And this idea then is that God’s people are assembled together and God links them into their actions. You know the way that Aaron pronounced the benediction at the end of the sacrifices, he links the sacrificial system and their gathering into the life of the people by producing at its end this Aaronic benediction. So in our worship service today, we have the grand rehearsal or performance of what’s supposed to take us into all the rest of our week. It’s the model and the link from this to that is the benediction that God places upon his people at the end.

Again, to quote from George Bush in his commentary written in 1858, he says the benediction should not be slighted as something merely to break up the congregation at the end of worship, but rather he says that they should be looked upon as the expression of the Lord’s goodwill to each of his worshippers involving the exhortation to do as well as to learn his commandments.

It is this link from worship into life. And now to read from another commentator, he says that the benediction serves as a bridge from the sacral aspect of worship in the sanctuary to the life outside. Too often, benediction means for us the end of the worship service when in fact it is meant to connect the service to the ongoing life of the worship of the people beyond the sanctuary.

The worship is a sacral activity in particular time and space. In the benediction, we are saying that the one for whom we move apart to worship is the one who goes with us as we go from the sacral gathering to guide the rest of our lives and provide its content and meaning as well. So this links us into life. It moves us into the context of our week and specifically, it is a transformation into—it is the connection or bridge point to our lives and prepares us for battle.

As I said, the book of Numbers is itself the book of the army and the conquest of God. You know, we talked about how these occurrences at Sinai bridge Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And when they move toward the conclusion of that period where they depart Sinai in Numbers 10, they’re going to go out as the army of God. The benediction in chapter 6 of Numbers immediately follows the instructions about the Nazirites and their vows to be taken to God.

And they were the particular warrior types of the people of God in the book of Numbers. And the benediction placed upon all the children of Israel says that in a sense, we’re all Nazirites. They’re special and set apart for a particular purpose in the holy warfare of God, but we’re all to receive this benediction or blessing from God to the end that we would go into that march to Canaan in the context of book of Numbers, empowered and blessed by God to that end.

We move forward year by year, century by century, millennium through millennium to see the manifestation of Canaan, the blessings of God and his presence of his people fill all the world. And so this benediction is the same thing to us. It prepares us for battle as it prepared the people of God to move out from their encampment in the context of Sinai to move toward the conquest of the promised land. So it is with us as well. It is a preparation for life and a preparation for battle. And of course, this battle is a victorious one as well.

Gordon Wenham in commenting on this context for the book of Numbers and its context for the benediction says that the introduction with other verses and preceding chapters says the benediction is linked with the regular desire to purify the camp. He says that it was to purify the people for the great act of worship, the march toward the promised land. And that march involves warfare.

Of course, in Psalm 67, we read, “God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. Selah.” So there’s an encapsulation of the benediction. Verse 2 says, “That thy way may be known upon earth. Thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, oh God. Let all the people praise thee. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon the earth.”

So here we have a restatement of the benediction. God be merciful to us, bless us, cause his face to shine upon us—a short form of the Aaronic benediction. And the whole purpose is that God’s way may be known upon the earth, thy saving health upon all nations. This torrent of blessings then provides us a transition into life, and that transition into life is one of battle and one of victory as well.

God assures us that as this name is put upon the children of Israel and as his benediction and blessing flow to his people, that he will indeed bless them. God’s face is the promise of his grace to his people, but it’s also the place from which he either hides his face or fire comes out of his face, according to the book of Deuteronomy, to consume his enemies. So we as the recipients of God’s grace in his face go forth as those who carry God’s blessing and power into the earth. But it also carries forth the curse of God upon his enemies.

Luther commenting on this third line of the Aaronic benediction said that it expresses a desire for consolation and a final victory over the cross, death, and the devil and all the gates of hell together with the world and the evil desires of the flesh. The desire of this blessing is that the Lord God will lift up the light of his word upon us and so keep it over us that it may shine in our hearts with strength enough to overcome all the opposition of the devil, death and sin and all adversity, terror or dismay.

This is the blessing and benediction of God upon his people to battle but beyond that to victory. Now as I’ve said this obviously involves…