We'll begin reading at verse
22, Numbers chapter 6, verse 22. The Lord said to Moses, tell
Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them, the Lord bless you
and keep you. Lord make his face shine upon
you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards
you and give you peace. So they will put my name on the
Israelites and I will bless them." This message actually began several
weeks ago, if you remember me preaching a message on the Pharisee
and the tax collector. And I mentioned to you that much
of the material that I'm preaching that message, I had gleaned from
a sermon by my philosophy professor that I found on Sermon Audio.
And he had made the point in that in the message, he made
the point that in the morning sacrifice, after the lamb had
been killed, and after the priest had gone in and offered the incense
before the Lord, he would come out of the temple and raise his
hands, and this would be the only time
Each priest was only allowed to do this once. Now, this wouldn't have been
the high priests in the line of Aaron. This would have been
any of the Levitical priests whose turn it was to serve at
the temple. But their name had been chosen by lot. And once
chosen, you were never put in the lot again. But the Jews would not speak
the name of God. out of fear that in so doing
they would take his name in vain, violating the commandment. Whenever
they read the scriptures, if they came to the name of Jehovah,
that's how we pronounce it in English, though it actually J
used to sound like a Y, so it's Jehovah or something similar
to that. Whenever they came to that in
the scriptures, they would use Adonai, the Lord. And that's
why when you look in your scriptures, like right here, it says, the
Lord said to Moses, and you'll notice Lord's all in capitals.
That means this is the name of God. And no one ever spoke it
except the priest on the morning that he would take the incense
into the holy place. And when he would come out, this
is the blessing he would pronounce. Now it was never, you won't find
in the scriptures that that was commanded, but it became their
way of doing things. And this would be the only time
that anyone would pronounce the name of God. They didn't say, Adonai, bless
you and keep you. They pronounced his name, so
this was an awesome thing for those priests to do. A great responsibility was laid
upon them. You can imagine if all your life
you'd been told, don't say this, don't utter this word. But now you're not only free
to, you are under obligation to, and if they had any sense
of the strictness of the law, they probably had substantial
fear that they speak it correctly, speak it with reverence. Yahweh bless you and keep you. Yahweh make his face shine upon
you and be gracious to you. Yahweh turn his face towards
you and give you peace. And having spoken the name of
the Lord three times in this threefold blessing, that would
be all they would ever speak it again. It's a solemn time. And once
again, while we have no scripture showing us that this is what
happened on the Day of Atonement, we must assume that that's when
Aaron would pronounce this blessing. When Aaron, the high priest,
remember the high priest was the only one allowed to go into
the most holy place, and it never went without blood. The blood
of the atoning sacrifice. And he would go in there and
he would spill that blood out on the altar. Well, it was kind
of an altar, it was the It was what's commonly called the mercy
seat, but actually what it means is the atonement lid. It was
that solid gold covering over top of the Ark of the Covenant.
Inside was the law which they had broken. There was a pot of
manna and Aaron's rod that had budded. But you can imagine with that
law in there, the law they had broken, it's a testimony of the
authority of God, and yet it's also a testimony of their sinfulness
and rebellion. But the high priest goes in there,
and with that blood of the sacrifice, he pours it on top of that lid,
and it covers. And their sins are out of sight
of the God, because you see, within the imagery of the temple,
It says, God is enthroned between the cherubim. And there were
two cherubim on that ark. And their wings would come up.
And it was as though he was right there in between them. Whether
God always represented himself there in what came to be known
as the Shekinah glory, I don't know. I know that he did when
the tabernacle was dedicated, and later again, I believe, when
the temple was dedicated. He descended in this glorious
representation of himself. But this was the only time the
high priest would go in there. He went in there with the blood
of atonement, then he would come out and bless the people. And
I think it's plausible to think this is the blessing he gave
them. Other priests pronounced this
blessing, but the high priest is the only one who was commanded
to pronounce this blessing on the house of Israel. Now let's notice the authority of this blessing. The Lord said to Moses, tell
Aaron, and his sons, meaning those who would be the high priest
after him. This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Now
Moses within the congregation of Israel was a symbol of the
authority of God. That's why the law came through
him. He's the one that brought it down. Aaron didn't bring the
law down. Moses did. And so Moses, in that capacity,
as the leader, the king, as it were, of the Israelites, he represents
the sovereign God, the king, the ruler of all things. So if all we read was that Moses
told Aaron and his sons to bless this way, we could draw this reality, this truth regarding
this blessing, that it has divine sanction because, after all,
he represented the divine being in his authority. But we have
more than this. It says, the Lord said to Moses, now God is going to bless his
people. It is written that the Father
has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places
in Christ. The Lord loves to bless his people. Spurgeon said, the happy God
desires a happy people. And he's using the word happy
because really, the word blessed can be translated
that way. And Paul described the gospel
as the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. Meaning by this, that God is
happy. God is not wringing his hands.
God is not in a state of conflict within himself about whether
or not his plan is going to come to pass. He is not frustrated. He is perfectly satisfied, content,
and rejoicing in how things are working out, because things are
working out exactly as he ordained them to do. And so the happy
God desires a happy people, and therefore he blesses them. The
fruit of the Spirit, says the scripture, is joy, among other
things, but It's the second thing listed, love, joy, peace. And so God pronounces blessings
upon his people. And it's in the knowledge of
these blessings that we find the joy of the Lord, which is
our strength. This blessing given to Israel
was not something Moses made up. It was not a just some Sentimental notion. When I went to music school,
music camp, in the summers of 72 and 73, everybody had to sing
in the choir. Though I remember, as we were
getting near the time to perform, the choir director said, now
there are some of you, and you know who you are, who can't sing. Just mouth the words. And that was true. They could
play instruments, but they just couldn't sing. But one of the songs that every
class, as you were, or every year, one of the songs that was
sung was a musical version of this blessing. done by a fellow
who lived from about 1850 to 1930, somewhere in there. Can't remember his name right
now. It's a beautiful piece. And we sang it without instruments,
and I love a cappella singing. And we'd sing it at every concert.
That's the way we ended it. The Lord bless you and keep you.
We'd sing it if there was a group of us sitting together, and it
was time now for the guys and the girls to go to their Separate
dorms, whoever was around, we'd often stand and sing that together.
Beautiful. The other morning I woke up with
that song in my mind, lay there for a while going over and over
thinking about this blessing from God. This blessing comes with the
authority of the Lord. It's not a blessing offered,
but a blessing commanded. He said to Moses, tell Aaron
and his son, this is how you are to bless the Israelites.
He didn't say now, if you feel like blessing the Israelites,
here's a good one. He essentially said, you will
bless the Israelites and this is how you will bless them. Everything that comes from God.
comes with all the authority that God has. It's not as though
I think Aaron would have been reluctant to pronounce this blessing.
Nonetheless, it comes as a command. Bless the Israelites. Now, this
blessing is a command of God, so it must be all the blessedness
that a God could command. This is why, and I don't want
to diminish the value of the earthly blessings we receive,
but it shows us how earthly minded we are when we think of blessing
in terms of earthly benefits instead of the kind of things
spoken of here. God has much better things for us than health,
wealth, and welfare, and all that. I'm not saying those things
aren't desirable, but you can go through life in
what would be considered an absolutely miserable condition, as the world
counts miserable. And yet, if you are the Lord's
people, Blessings are heaped upon you such as you cannot imagine. This blessing would come to the
people through Aaron, the high priest. Aaron, a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Aaron on the day of atonement
would put on his glorious high priestly robes. And that wasn't
done in order that we would learn to really dress up on Sundays. All the pieces of his clothes
said something about Christ who would come. But the high priest would clothe
himself in those robes, the plate on his forehead, holiness to
the Lord. The names of Israel on the breastplate,
the names of the tribes of Israel. Various colors signifying various
things. His body was washed so that he
might represent purity and all that. And then he would kill
the sacrificial lamb. And he would take that blood
and go into the holy place. And he would stop at the altar
of incense and take the censer and put some coals and incense
in it. And then he would enter that
most holy place, smoke rising up. Some have said the smoke
was there to obscure the sight of God, for no man can see his
face and live. Smoke may also be there. The
smoke of the incense shows a bit of the wrath. You know, when
our Lord was crucified, it is written that the sun was darkened,
and I was reading some on that particular issue, and they translated
that word obscured. The son was obscured for three
hours. And I think we rightly consider it was especially during
those three hours that this transaction between God and his son, God
and the Lamb of God, this transaction went on. in which God visited
upon the Lamb of God the fullness of divine wrath for all the sins
that he bore. And it was obscured. You weren't
going to be able to see that. But those that smoke also represented
the prayers, the intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ. And
so the priest goes in there with that smoking censer thing in
that basin of blood, and then he pours it out over there. And then he comes out, a picture
of our Lord's resurrection. If he'd gone in there without
blood, he'd have died. The Lord would have killed him. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when he
came, In the presence of the Father to intercede for us, he
interceded by his blood. Had our sins been laid upon him
and then he tried to come before God, the judge of all, without
blood, he would have perished forever. But by his blood. The blood of
a spotless sacrifice. He was able to enter into the
presence of God once for all, having obtained eternal redemption
for us. And that's why three days later
he came out of the tomb. He put away the sins that he
bore. He no longer bore sin. And a person without sin is not
supposed to be in the grave. Death had no more power or authority
over him because death comes by sin and by his death he got
rid of the sin he had. He no longer had sin. And because
the sin that he had was ours in the doing of them, we no longer
had sin. They're gone. And our Lord Jesus
Christ came up out of the tomb And he blessed the disciples. And in particular, it says that
as he was about to ascend on high, he raised his hands and
blessed them. God's great high priest. And
Aaron, he offered that blood. Then he turned around and he
walked out of the most holy place, through the holy place, out into
the court. in the courtyard where the people
were. And he'd raise his hand. Because you see, it's only then
that blessing can be given. There is no blessing apart from
the innocent substitute being sacrificed, offered to God, and
God accepting it. But once God has accepted the
sacrifice, not only is the door to blessing open, blessing is
required. In as much as our Lord Jesus
Christ bore everything our conduct deserved, we are given everything
his conduct deserved, and that's blessing. Aaron, on the day of atonement,
would go into the most holy place under the authority of God, under
the direction of God. God said, do it like this. And
so he went that way. And Christ came, and he did what
his father sent him to do. He did things as it was instructed. Aaron went in there the way he
was told to, and that enabled him to come back out and bless
the people as he was told to. And the blessing is in three
parts. Now, we believe in what is called
the Trinity. And to be honest with you, there
is, to my knowledge, not any verse of Scripture, or even chapter
of Scripture, that lays out the doctrine of the Trinity plainly. In fact, what we often refer
to as the doctrine of the Trinity was something that men devised
as a means to reconcile what looks like contradictions in
the scripture. In fact, as I understand it,
it was a response to one of the heretics of the day who was saying
that Jesus Christ is not God. At least that's part of what
motivated them to get together and formulate the doctrine we
call the Trinity. But even though the Trinity is
not plainly stated, it's more like it's assumed.
You cannot make sense of the scriptures without it. There
is God, the Father. The Father is God. There is the
Son. He is God. And there is the Spirit. He is God. And there's only one
God. But the Father's not the Son.
And the Son is not the Spirit. And the Spirit isn't either one
of them. If that doesn't make any sense,
don't be surprised. Do you think that our minds would
ever be able to actually grasp the nature of the infinite God? No. And quite often when we try to
understand such mysterious doctrines as the doctrine of the Trinity,
what we actually do is mess things up. Just like the divinity of Christ,
just like the doctrine that says Jesus of Nazareth, a man, is
God. Now that's a doctrine you can't
explain. You can say it, but our minds
don't know how to get wrapped around a combination of the infinite
and the finite, the creator and a created being. We don't know
how that can be. And so we don't try to analyze
it, and you know, and analyze actually means to loose down.
It was used as a description of the way they'd unpack animals.
You know, pack animals, not like they just threw one great big
package on top of them. They'd put one on, then tie another
one, and tie another one, and tie another one, until you had
this big bundle of small packages, and the word unluso meant to
loose down, so they, one by one, they would take it down. And
that word, annuluso, became analyze in our language, and that's how
we learn a lot of things. We see something kind of big,
and it's too much for us to grasp all at once, so we try to take
it apart into its smaller portions, and it, you know, eat as it were,
each smaller bite, and then hope, you know, once we get each little
part, we can put it back together and understand the whole doctrine.
But there's some doctrines you can't do that to. There are no
smaller parts to Jesus as God. That's just so. So how is he
God? I don't know. I just know that
he is. You swallow it whole. And this thing about the Trinity,
I've heard some pretty fancy theological descriptions of it,
and I read them, and I say, all they've done is admit they don't
understand what they're talking about. Now, and I'm not thinking
that they should. The only problem is, you know,
when they formulate these doctrines, they act like, boy, we've really
come up with some understanding now. Not really. You have described something that is simply so, and it will
not fit into the categories of our mind, but we believe it anyway. But even in the Old Testament,
there are occasionally hints of it. And the reason I say hints
is because we cannot say dogmatically, this was put here to teach us
the Trinity. The thing is, though, this threefold
blessing fits very well within the context of the Father, the
Son, and the Spirit. They are actually very similar,
and yet there are distinctions in them, which the Bible has
assigned traditionally to the three persons of the Trinity. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord bless you. The blessing of man, well, it
is what it is. Very small. And a man may bless
you one day and curse you the next. But if the Lord blesses
you, it is complete and it is unchanging. The Lord said blessing and cursing
cannot come out of the same mouth. And that certainly is true of
our God. Oh, if the Lord blesses you, you have nothing but blessing.
Do you believe that? You say, oh, but I got pains and
aches. Well, they're blessings of a different sort. I don't
want to minimize these. And I say that not only for your
sake, so that you won't think I'm Being harsh, I also don't
want to stand up here and act as though I do not have a preference
for which kind of blessings I want. But nonetheless, I know from
the scriptures, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if
his blood has been shed for you, if it's been offered in the presence
of God, God has ordained that all things be a blessing for
you, no matter what they are. And they may be very painful.
But in due time, God shall make it clear, it was as blessed as
it was painful. The Lord bless you. Paul said,
blessed be. Of course, there the word is
indicating praise. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places. The Lord bless you, why? Because
no real blessing can come from anyone else. If the world were to bless you
with riches, you can't have them forever.
These blessings are forever. We sing the song, praise God,
from whom all blessings flow. And that's true. The Lord bless you. If the Lord
blesses you, he will never curse you. And if the Lord blesses
you, no one else can curse you either. The Lord bless you, and
then this specific, and keep you. You ever feel prone to fall? Prone to wonder? I never feel
anything else. I know me. I know how much I stumble and
fall. And I know that if God were not
to bless me with his preserving grace, I would fall to perdition. Keep you. What a blessed thing
for our God to bless us with, preservation, because we can't
preserve ourselves. In fact, we are often our own
worst enemy in this matter, but he will keep us. We're no match
for the enemies that we face. The world is too enticing to
us. And we would surely go off and
follow the world and give ourselves over it, were it not that the
Lord, Jehovah God, preserves us. And the devil? I've seen some of these Pentecostal
charismatic type preachers and they act like they're gonna whoop
up on the devil. And I think, you know, I don't think you're
as good as Adam was before sin. as good as Eve, and they were
no match for the devil. What makes us think? Now, I'm
not afraid of him, but my lack of fear of the devil has nothing
to do with what I am. It has altogether to do with
the God I worship. Usually the religious sayings
on Facebook or rather trite at best. But once in a while, one comes
across that has real powers and one of them is when the devil
shows you your trials, show him your God. And that's true. The Lord bless
you and keep you. All brethren, we are kept. Kept
by the power of God through faith. Now unto him who is able to keep
you from falling, to establish you. And next, the Lord make his face
shine upon you and be gracious to you. We all know what it's like when
it's cold outside and then the sun finds a way to hit us. Sun
feels warm, doesn't it? The other day somebody mentioned
that. Said, you know, the sun even feels warmer sometimes in
the winter than it does in the summer. And I, who have an opinion
about everything, even if I come up with it at that moment, I
said, well, maybe it's because in the summer there's heat all
around you and you just don't notice the added heat of the
sun. But in the winter, it's cold around you and you notice
the side of you that's toward the sun. The sun coming out has
a greater effect because you're in the cold. And what a blessed
thing that God's face shines upon us in this cold world. But where does God's face shine? Paul says that we behold the
glory, that resplendent shining glory. in the face of God, in
the face of Jesus Christ. The Lord make his face shine
upon you. What's this? This is a call that the God of
heaven, within his sovereign grace, make himself known to
you in Christ. Because if he doesn't do it,
it doesn't happen. I can tell you about Christ and
I love to do it. I describe Christ the best I
know him, the best he's revealed in the scriptures, but brethren,
I cannot make the glory of God shine upon you in the face of
Christ. Only God can do that. And when
he does, wow. And tied to this is, and be gracious
to you. Paul said, you know the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, how though he were rich, yet for
our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might
be made rich. People say, I've often said,
and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but I believe
in God's sovereign grace. Good. Where is it? Tell me how
to find that grace. It's in Christ. It's not found
anywhere else. It's not found in your works.
It's not found in your church. It's not found in the hands of
some Ecclesiastical priesthood or the pastor or something like
that. It's one of the things about
invitations that once I understood something, it kind of bothered
me. Why are you coming down front? Nobody down there has got anything
for you that you can't get right back there from God. There's nothing in the preacher's
hand. I can wish blessings for you, but I can't bless you. Only Christ can do that. That
grace of God that brings salvation has come to us through Christ
as the one in whose face God shines upon his people. Verse
26, the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Now in Isaiah, the Lord said, Turn unto me. Some translations
say, look to me. Both concepts are actually in
the word, because they were looking elsewhere. So it's turn and look
at me. We are called upon to look to
him, to turn our face to him. And those that turn their faces
to him are saved. But here's what stands behind
it all. The Lord turned his face toward us. Give you an example maybe of
the significance of this. If you've had the chance to raise
children, they did something they're not supposed to do, and
you begin to verbally explain to them they shouldn't have done
that. And therefore, they got to go to their room or whatever
punishment you assigned for that activity, and they will often
turn right around and turn their back to you. What are they doing?
They're cutting themselves off from you. That's what's being
symbolized there. I won't make eye contact with
you. You can't see my face. There is no communication between
you and me, no love, no respect, none of this. That's what it
means. And that's why You're generally
speaking, I mean, you understand that concept without somebody
explaining it to you, and that's why you turn around here and
look at me. Why? Because to turn the face towards
somebody means you're plugged into them. God turns his face toward his
people. Oh, under the law, his back was
turned. His back there in a, Symbolically
speaking, back there in a building that very few could go into,
and then back there in a back room that only one person could
go into, nobody could see God's face. It wasn't turned toward
them. In Christ Jesus, and by the workings
of His Spirit, God turns His face toward us and reveals Himself
to us. And He turns His face toward
us with not the stern look of an offended king, He turns his
face toward us as the one who's been reconciled and who comes
not bearing a whip or a sword, but everlasting blessing. For it says, the Lord turned
his face toward you and give you Jesus Christ, by His sacrifice,
reconciled God. And the Spirit of God is the
face of God turned towards us. And He comes to His people. He's reconciled to them. He's
not angry at them. His wrath has already been spent
against their sin. He does not come to them that
He might exact a penalty or gain something from them. He comes
to them truly as a reconciled friend, as a reconciled father.
It's them that aren't reconciled. Their back's turned. They're
pitching a spiritual fit. Arms crossed, frowning face. And he turns that loving face
and he calls their name. And they turn and they see. And
when they see that aspect of God, when they see that face,
like the face of the father of the prodigal son who's been looking
down that road every day, knowing there'll be a day when that son
comes home and he's ready and he's there with new shoes, new
clothes, family ring, and a party. And we have peace, because we
realize our God's not out to destroy us. We have rest, because
we discover the work's already been done, else he would not
be smiling towards us. And in verse 27, this text of
blessing was going through my mind, and I had already kind
of put a sermon together in my mind, And I thought, I better
look it up. Because I've come up with some
sermons, and when I saw the text within its context, it didn't
work anymore. I looked it up, and then here's verse 27. So
they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless
them. They. Who's they? The high priest. Christ, our great high priest. What will they do? in the pronouncement
of this blessing. They will put my name on the
Israelites. His name. The name they don't
feel they're allowed to pronounce. It's put on them. Now, I tried
to think of the ways that put on
them might be applied. One way is to make his name known
to them. The name of God is generally
associated with his covenant, the covenants of promise. But the one that got me the most Maybe if we paraphrased it this
way, so they will stamp my name on the Israelites. These are mine. I always hated
it, but anytime I had to take something to school, mom would
make me put my name on it, you know. I don't want to have my
name on that, it looks silly, you know, and all that. That
way if somebody stole it, you know, it's still mine because
my name's on it. God puts his name on his people. Puts it on them like a seal of
ownership. A seal tells who it owns, and
it's basically saying under the authority of this name, do not
touch this one. Satan goes about as a roaring
lion, seeking whom he may devour, and he comes up to one of God's
people and he's ready to eat him up, and then he sees the
name of God right there. This is one he can't touch without
permission. And even then, God will never
give him permission to touch his soul. In Isaiah 43, our brother read, Fear not, O worm Jacob, for I
have chosen you. I have redeemed you. You are
mine. I've written your name, excuse
me, written my name on you. And God is not going to lose
anything that belongs to him. And then he says, you will put
my name on the Israelites and I will bless them. It's not only marks them out
for protection, it marks them out for blessing. Now this is
what I like. Here is the promise of the sovereign
God. I will bless them. You'll notice
in this whole thing, the children of Israel don't do anything to
get this blessing. God, through Moses, tells Aaron,
the picture of Christ, to pronounce a blessing. And by doing so,
the name of the Lord is stamped upon them, and he will bless
them. And brethren, here we sit this
morning. Our conduct may determine what
kind of blessings we get on earth. Sometimes we get the blessing
of discipline. Sometimes the blessing of sweet times. But here's one thing we know
for sure. That we are blessed with all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places. Not because of anything we've
done. Not because we even desired them. or even now that we have
them, appreciate them sufficiently. Now, we are blessed with those
spiritual blessings because God ordained that we would because
Jesus Christ died in payment for those blessings. And the
Spirit of God has come to us and told us all about that and
has written the name of God on us And God has said, I will bless
them. So when it looks to you, you
who believe, like you are not experiencing any blessing from
the Lord, or when you feel that your sins, grievous as they are,
will somehow deprive you of the blessings of the Lord, remember
the father said to the son, You bless them like this, and in
so doing, you will write my name on them, and I will bless them. And until you can find in there
something that we do or avoid doing, you can rest assured,
if Christ did what he was sent to do, we are blessed. The Lord bless you. keep you. The Lord make his face to shine
upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards
you and give you peace. Heavenly Father thank you for
this word in the name of Christ we pray it, amen.