Well, let us turn again to God's
Word and directing you to the closing verses in Numbers chapter
6 Numbers chapter 6 from verse 22 And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this
wise ye 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. I want to consider then this blessing,
the Aaronic Benediction. We have looked at the verses
or certainly part of the verses previously, but I want us to
consider the whole of this passage that we've just read from verse
22 through to verse 27. The reason is, of course, that
last Thursday we did consider what we have as the New Testament
equivalent of this benediction. There in 2 Corinthians 13 and
verse 14, the apostolic benediction, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you
all. Amen. says the Apostle as he
concludes that second letter to the Church of Corinth. And there are similarities between
those words that we were looking at last time and the words of
this longer passage that I've read here at the end of Numbers
chapter 6. And so to consider this Aaronic
benediction, the words that were to be spoken over the nation,
over the tribes of Israel by the sons of Aaron the priest
and two things really how they are to bless in the name of God
we have God's name and as we have God's name so we also have
God's blessing and I want to follow that simple division for
a while tonight it's interesting isn't it that
the words of the blessing were to be spoken by the priests. We know how the priests were
those who would mediate between the people and their gods. It was the priests who were to
serve in the tabernacle and then in the temple. We get that passage at the end
of 1 Kings chapter 8. how after his long prayer, the
dedication of the temple, King Solomon blesses the people. And
then we have the various sacrifices that were offered on that auspicious
day, the dedication of the temple. The priests then served God.
In the temple, as they had served Him previously in the tabernacle,
they came before Him and they would present sacrifices on behalf
of the people and they would also make prayers for the nation. They didn't just serve God at
the brazen altar, where the sacrifices would be subsequently offered,
but they also served at the golden altar there before the Holy of
Holies, where they burned the incense, representative of the
prayers. But as the priests mediated between
men and God, so the priests also mediate between God and men. In Malachi chapter 2 and verse
7 we read these words, The priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law
at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. He is God's
messenger to the people just as he is a messenger on behalf
of the people to God. And here we see that the priests
were those who were to pronounce the Lord's blessing. As it says
in the last verse, they shall put my name upon the children
of Israel and I will bless them. And so first of all to say something
with regards to God's name. What is the name of God? Well
we have it of course in those three verses. 24, 25 and 26. The Lord. The Lord. The Lord. And it's the covenant
name. It's the name Jehovah. It's that name that's derived
from what God had said to Moses at the burning bush, when Moses
had received that solemn call to be the deliverer of the children
of Israel, to bring them forth out of that bondage that they
were having to endure there in Egypt. And the Lord appears to
him in the bush that burns, and yet the bush is not consumed. It's really the glory of God.
the consuming fire, which is God, in the midst of the bush.
And then the Lord declares himself. Verse 14 of Exodus 3, God said
unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, Thus shalt thou
say unto the children of Israel, I am ascently unto you. And God
said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children
of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name forever, and
this is my memorial unto all generations." And it's His very
name, the Great I Am, the Lord, that is being put here upon the
children of Israel. And it's a threefold name, of
course, because it reminds us of the great doctrine of the
Trinity. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost. Remember again the vision that
Isaiah is favoured with, blessed with there in chapter 6 of his
prophecy when he sees the throne of God as his heir in the temple
of the Lord. He has this remarkable vision
granted to him and he sees the angels about God's throne, and
what do they say? Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of
hosts, Holy Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit. As I said, there
is certainly that similarity with what we were looking at
last time, there at the end of 2nd Corinthians, where we have
in the fullness of the New Testament revelation, the names of course,
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, that is the
Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. But it's the
same persons. These are the three that bear
record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,
as John says. And although God's name is a
threefold name, yet in verse 27 we see that the noun, name,
is in the singular. God doesn't say they shall put
my names. He says they shall put my name.
And we're reminded of that, of course, when the believer makes
his open profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
he's baptized. Remember the commission that
the Lord gave to his disciples there at the end of Matthew 28,
going into all the world, preach the gospel unto every creature,
baptizing them in the name, again it's singular, in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And what do
we see here in these verses 24, 25, 26? We have the Father, who is the source of salvation. In verse 24, the Lord bless thee
and keep thee. We have the Son, the One who
is the revealer of salvation. In the 25th verse, the Lord make
His face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The blessing comes from the Father,
so that blessing shines in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Father is the source, the Son is the revealer, and the
Holy Spirit is the one who makes application. The Lord lift up
his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. Where does that
peace come? It comes by and through the gift
of the Holy Ghost. And so here we see that the blessing
is very much in God's name. But let's, in the second place,
consider more carefully the blessing itself. And we see how the emphasis
in the words that are to be pronounced very much falls on the face of
God, or the countenance of God. We have it twice. Verse 25, the Lord make his face
shine upon them. And then verse 26, the Lord lift
up his countenance upon them. The lifting up of the countenance
is synonymous really with the shining of the face of God. Remember the words of the wise
man in the book of Proverbs when he says as in water face answers
to face so the heart of a man to man the importance of the face and what it is to see one another's
faces to look into each other's eyes the importance of these
things the experience of Jacob when he discovers that Joseph
is yet alive in Egypt and then he's taken to see this son that
he thought was long ago dead and gone and what does he say
Genesis 48 11 I have not thought to see thy face and lo God has
showed me also thy seed oh he never thought he'd see his face
again what a blessing it was and how wonderful it is of course
when we're parted from loved ones for any season and then
we see them again and we see their faces and the joy on faces,
the face answering to face as says the wise man there in the
proverb and so Jacob again when he's so favoured of God at the
the brook of Apennia where he wrestles with the angel
where the angel is wrestling with him. And he's the one who
gives the place that particular name. He called it Peniel. And
the margin there in Genesis 32 indicates quite clearly just
what that name means. It has meaning, as is so often
the case of course with names here in Holy Scripture. And Peniel
literally means the face of God. Jacob called the name of the
place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, he says, and
my life is preserved." Now where is it? Where is it that God reveals
himself? Where is it that God, as he were,
shows his face? Is it not in the Lord Jesus Christ
himself? We often refer to those words
in 2 Corinthians 4.6 that the God who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to show the light
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God's glory
is seen there in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's
interesting because what we have there is the face of the Lord
Jesus Christ. The same word is used previously
in 2 Corinthians 2 verse 10 where we have this statement, For your
sakes, he says, I forgave it in the person of Christ. There the word is translated
the person of Christ In chapter 4 and verse 6 it's translated
in the face of Christ. His glory shining in the face,
in the person. It's the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The Lord make His face shine
upon them. The Lord lift up the light of
His countenance upon them. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ
then that God really reveals himself. He's in Christ that
one who is the image of the invisible God. It's in the incarnation,
it's with the coming of the Saviour that we really see the glories
that belong unto God. No man hath seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. He
hath declared or the Lord Jesus Christ then is really the Lord
He is Jehovah Jehovah Jesus God manifest in the flesh He says
at the end of John chapter 8 before Abraham was I am He is the I
am and throughout John we have that I am revelation in all those
things that Christ says of himself I am the Good Shepherd. I am
the Way, the Truth and the Life. I am the Resurrection and the
Life. I am the Door. I am the Vine. All this is the
revelation of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
in Christ's name that God, and only in Christ, that God is and
can be known. And how grievous it is for the
Child of God, when, as it were, that face is veiled. Oh, the psalmist knew it at times.
He felt as if he'd been deserted by God. We know our sins separate
between us and God. He says as much. Your iniquities
have separated between you and your God. Your sin has hid his
face from you. And the psalmist cries out, How
long wilt thou forget me, O Lord, forever? How long will thou hide
thy face from us? Isn't that what we feel when
we transgress, when we fall, when Satan comes and gains that
awful advantage over us and entraps us? And we feel the distance. And we want the Lord to come
again and to address us as he does the Psalmist. There in Psalm
27, 8, when thou sayest, Seek ye my face. My heart set thy
face, O Lord, will I seek." Or when the Lord puts it in our
hearts to seek His face, to come and make our confessions, to
acknowledge our sins. Again, the psalmist says, doesn't
he, there'll be many that say, who will show us any good Lord?
Lift up the light of thy countenance upon me. Isn't that what we really
desire, that the Lord is smiling upon us? that we know we have
his favour, his blessing this is the blessing then the Lord
make his face shine upon them the Lord lift up his countenance
upon them and it reminds us of the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ who is that one in whom we see God and we see him as
it were face to face but then also here This great benediction
reminds us of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It speaks,
doesn't it, of grace and of peace. Be gracious unto them and give
thee peace. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ
that we have that remarkable display of God's grace. towards
sinners. That fiver, that blessing that
is altogether unmerited. There's nothing in the sinner that brings God to an attraction. God is gracious because He's
a gracious God. The Lord is good. The Lord does
good. And what does John said there in the opening chapter
of his gospel, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth
came by Jesus Christ. Grace and truth. Oh, you know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though He were rich, yet for
your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might
be made rich. This is the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ and how we see it worked out in his life in all
that he has to endure in this fallen world at the hands of
men but then ultimately all that he must endure there upon the
cross where he makes a great sin atoning sacrifice where he
bears in his own person all that wrath that was due to the sins
of those that were given to him in the covenant And he cries
in the language of Psalm 22, My God, my God, why? Hast thou
forsaken me? He experienced the hiding of
the face of God. And why so? He experiences that
in order that sinners might know the shining of the face of God. That's why, having loved his
own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. that
He will bear them, that wrath that was their just desert, because
of the great love that He bears towards them. For here we have
grace, 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. Oh, this man shall be the peace,
says the prophet Micah, this man. All that is the man, the
man Christ Jesus, the second man, the Lord from heaven, the
last Adam, this man. And how is He the peace? It's by and through that great
work that He accomplished upon the cross. And Paul speaks of
it so often in his epistles, the language that we have there,
writing in His letter to the Colossians, in chapter 1, verse 20, he says, "...of Christ,
and have He made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him
to reconcile all things unto Himself. By Him I say, whether
they be things in earth or things in heaven, and you that were
sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through
death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable
in his sight." Or you, you he says, were enemies, alienated and yet made nigh by the blood
of Christ because he endured the hiding of the Father's flesh.
Or there is that gracious smiling, the Lord looks with favor upon
the sinner who is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has made peace. And what is that peace? Well,
it's associated with propitiation, those words that we find in John's
first general epistle. In 1 John 2.2, he is the propitiation
for our sins, John says. And then again in chapter 4 and
verse 10, here in His love, not that we love God, but that He
loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation. Yes, it's a technical
word, it's a theological term, but it's a precious term because
it reminds us that God's justice is now satisfied, God's wrath
has been visited upon that blessed substitute. who has died just
for the unjust to bring sinners to God all these then are the blessings
that we have and the blessings center in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ and his work remember what we said concerning how those
two words person and face are interchanged when Paul writes
there in 2nd Corinthians. In chapter 2 and verse 10, I
refer to those words, for your sakes I forgave it in the person
of Christ, but then in chapter 4 and verse 6, God who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. it's in Christ then that we see
God and then here also we have this keeping in the first of the blessings
the Lord bless thee and keep thee as I said it's the Father who
is the source of all good the source of all blessings Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, says Paul,
who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus, according as he hath chosen us in him before
the foundation of the world. And as the Father has made that
choice, so the Father keeps his people. They're kept. They're kept by the power of
God. through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last
time. Or what does Christ say? I give
unto them eternal life, they shall never perish. No man is able to pluck them
out of my hand. My Father which gave them to
me is greater than all. No man can pluck them out of
my Father's hand. They're kept. they kept safe
it's the name of the Lord isn't it? they shall put my name upon
the children of Israel and I will bless them says the Lord God
the name of the Lord is a strong tower and the righteous runneth
into it and is safe oh it's that name of the Lord they run into
it how are they brought then to to enter into that blessed
place Well, it's through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Christ says of Him, when the Spirit of Truth is come, He will
guide you into all truth. Oh, He leads, He directs them,
He speaks of Christ, He reveals, He glorifies Christ in them as
the only Savior. He ministers peace to all those
who are convicted of their sin. This is a blessing then. It's
a blessing that comes in the name of the triune God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. And it's what the priests are
to do. The Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye
shall bless the children of Israel. And, of course, the Aaronic priesthood
is typical. It's a type of the priesthood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is an unchanging priesthood. He's a priest after the order
of Melchizedek, as we're told in Hebrews. And we're to consider
the apostle and high priest of our profession. What do these
priests do? in the Old Testament, when they
make sacrifices, they pray, they bless the people, and the Lord
Jesus Christ does all of those things as the fulfillment of
the offers. He's not only the high priest,
He's the sacrifice, He's the Lamb of God. He offers Himself. He makes His soul an offering
for sin. And he prays. We have his high
priestly prayer for his people recorded there in John 17. How he prays. Oh, we're told,
aren't we, by the Apostle, he is able also to save them to
the uttermost and come unto God by him, seeing that he ever liveth
to make intercession for them. He ever lives, he's in heaven.
He lives in the life in the power of an endless life there in heaven
and His very presence His session there at the Father's right hand
is a constant prayer for His people He has entered heaven
itself just as the High Priest in the Old Testament would enter
into the Holy of Holies before the Mercy Seat so Christ has
gone to that holy place in heaven, to appear in the presence of
God and to make intercession. He's a praying priest and he's
a priest who blesses his people. Isn't that what we witness at
the end of Luke's Gospel where he speaks of the Lord's departure
from his disciples Luke 24 50 he led them out as
far as Bethany and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And he came to pass while he
blessed them. He was parted from them and carried
up into heaven. Oh, in his very going, in his
leaving them, he is blessing them. He is blessing them. And they worshipped him and returned
to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple
praising and blessing God. Says Luke, Amen. He blesses them,
they return to Jerusalem and what are they doing? They're
blessing and they're worshipping God. The Lord is that one then
who is the real priest who comes to bless his people. I read that
passage at the end of the first Kings chapter 8 because we've
been reading through those chapters and it did strike me out that
there at the dedication King Solomon doesn't just pray and offer sacrifices but he also
blesses the people and of course Solomon also is a remarkable
type of the Lord Jesus Christ As Solomon blesses Israel, so
the Lord Jesus Christ blesses all his Israel, all that spiritual
Israel, even those that were given to him by the Father. And
what a blessing it is! Thou blessest, O Lord, and it
shall be blessed forever, we read. Thou blessest, O Lord,
it shall be blessed forever. The blessing of the Lord, it
maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it. This is the God
then that is here in this Old Testament benediction, this Aaronic
benediction. And it's God's name. That's the
wonderful thing. The blessing is the putting of
the name of God upon the children of Israel. 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. Well, what do we
read at the end of Scripture? There in Revelation 22, Heaven,
they shall see His face, it says. And His name shall be in their
foreheads. They shall see His face. That's
the prospect. No more any hiding of His face.
No more sin. Sin can never enter there. Sin
will never again separate between us and our God or hide His face
from us. That's the prospect. Oh, the
Lord grant that tonight we might know something then of that gracious,
shining, of the face of God, the enshining of the gospel into
our hearts as we come before the Lord in prayer. The Lord
bless his word to us. Let us, before we pray again, turn to the hymn
number 556. The tune is 73 Trenton. The Lord proclaims His name,
and sinners hear His voice. His mercy ever stands the same,
and wealthy in Him rejoice. His name is gracious still, and
freely He bestows the bounty of His sovereign will on all
who feel their woes. The Hymn 556, Tune 73. No.