The Blessing | Numbers 6:22-26

You're listening to audio from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now here's the teaching. Well, good morning. Hey, if this is your first Sunday at faith, welcome.

Or congratulations. I'm not sure, what's in order. It's a bit different this morning. My name's Joey. After fifteen years of working at Faith, six and a half as a student ministry pastor, and seven and a half as one of the co lead pastors, today's my last day serving Faith Church, which makes this my last sermon as one of your pastors.

Hopefully not my last sermon ever. Love to be back at some point, you know, to guest preach on a Sunday. That way when I come back, I'll finally have the opportunity to say, when I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master. Which I guess makes me Darth Vader in this, that was my obligatory nod to Star Wars.

May the fourth be with you. Thank you. Thank you. But, yeah, it's my last time up here as a pastor at faith, and it feels, kind of heavy, like I'm supposed to say something super profound or something, like leave everybody with something. As I came in, people were saying different things like, are you gonna hit us with your last punch?

Or, you know, I'm expecting thirty minutes of just pure gold. Problem is, I mean, I well, I was gonna say I I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. But the transition didn't work, so I'm just gonna put my ring on. And, anyway. There's like no pressure, but, you know, a lot of pressure.

So I've been thinking for the last couple of weeks, what text of scripture do you turn to, for for last words? I asked our former pastor, Tom Macy, for some advice, and he said he's never he hasn't preached enough farewell sermons to really be good at it yet, which is what I'm hoping is is true for me as well. But I was looking through scripture, you know, there's actually a lot of times where someone is trying to get across, like, last words before they die. I was like, that doesn't really fit. Or a last lesson before they leave forever and and never to return.

And I was like, well, that doesn't really fit either. Right? So King David's last words before, you know, he dies or or Paul's last warning to the church in Ephesus. He's like, I won't be back. Now that I'm gone, watch out.

Here come the wolves. Like, that's that's not us. So rather than try to get across, you know, a last teaching or a last warning or something like that, my wife Jenna, my daughter Anna, and I would rather leave you all with a blessing. So I chose the I mean, it's it's beautiful. It's poetic.

The blessing found in number six, and I want to take the last few minutes that we have together unpacking, this blessing for all of us. Shall we jump in? Alright, let's do it. If you've been around church as much, you've probably heard these words, or something like them before. It's a beautiful blessing.

It's put in this richly poetic way, and it's a blessing that comes directly from God himself. It wasn't written by any one person. These were God's words to Moses to give to Aaron to use if you've got a Bible and you want to follow along. Number six is on page 135, if there's a Bible underneath the seat in front of you. But verses 22 through 27, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, 'Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, thus you shall bless the people of Israel.

You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. And this is how you, Aaron, your sons as priests, will put my name, God says, will put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them. Now if you're not familiar with ancient Israelite culture, there might be a few things here that are a little opaque or or a bit confusing.

This blessing is found, it's in the book of Numbers, fourth book of the Bible. You know those first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, they were all originally written by Moses and they recount the story of the nation of Israel from the very beginning of creation, to when God chose a man named Abraham to be the father of this nation, Israel, then Abraham's family moves to Egypt to survive a famine, and then how they eventually end up in slavery there in Egypt, and we follow the story to when God miraculously rescued them out of Egypt through a leader named Moses. There's that forty years of the nation wandering in the desert on their way to the land that God has promised to them, and there's the whole setting up of the law system that God gave them. Eventually by the end we see them arriving in the land. So where this blessing shows up in Numbers, it's kind of near the end of that story.

It's in the section where God is giving Moses instructions for how the people of Israel are going to relate properly to God in the future. Right? God's the one who rescued them from slavery. So how do you live in light of being rescued like that? And part of these instructions involved making atonement.

That's a word that just means making things right. God knew that his people wouldn't follow him perfectly. They'd be drawn off to other things, to other loves, and they need a way to come back to him. So he made a way for them to make that right once a year. Guys, you know what I'm talking about.

We call that Valentine's Day. When you spend way too much money on candy and and chocolates and flowers and dinner and all that, and you're like, forgive me for being a bonehead the last year and and all the things I've done. Kids, you call it Mother's Day. Right? So it's kind of like that.

It's the same sort of idea. At the end of that day, they very creatively called it the day of atonement. At the end of that day, the priest, the guy who was, you know, the religious leader who represented the people to God, but he also represented God to the people, he would stand up before the whole congregation and would convey this blessing on everyone. They did this every year, hundreds of years. The first priest was Aaron, and then his sons, and their sons who served after him, who became the priests just throughout generations.

This was done every single year. Priest reminded the people that blessing them is not something they have to beg for. It's God's idea. He's like, I want to bless you. He can't wait to bless them.

It's the way the priests remind the people, you are in God's favor, you're in his peace, you're in his grace. So with that context in mind, let me read number six again. I'm gonna paraphrase it to kind of pull out a little bit more of the meaning. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, tell Aaron and his sons, all of those who are serving as priests, this is how you are going to bless the people of Israel, my people. Since you're gonna say to them that the Lord Yahweh, the Lord Yahweh bless you and keep you.

The Lord Yahweh look on you with a loving smile, which is his abundant grace to you, and the Lord Yahweh fix his attention on you to give you the peace you were made for. So at the end of the ceremonies on the day of atonement, the high priest would get up and he would intone these words over the people. But interestingly, I want you to notice this, the words in the blessing you can't really tell in English, but the words in the blessings aren't plural. They're singular. In other words, even though he's reciting the blessing over y'all, it's directed at you.

He's speaking over the people, but it's directed at each person. Through the priest, God is saying the Lord Yahweh bless you, and bless you, and bless you. And if I could, that's that's what I would want to do, have that conversation with each person individually. I mean, you know, no matter how big of a people we are, how big of a church we are, we're all still persons. Right?

Individuals. A friend asked me this week what what would be the hardest part about leaving faith, you know, what part of faith am I gonna miss the most. And I told him I think what I'm gonna miss the most is, you know, every time I get up to preach or every time my wife gets up to lead worship, we can we can look out and we have a story for almost every single person in the room. We can tell stories of meals together, of serving together. We could talk about some of the incredibly difficult and hard things we've gone through together, the times we've laughed together until our faces hurt, all the joys we've shared.

Some of those stories I can't share here. They're incriminating. Nathan, I'll leave those, not come back to those. Some of those stories are self incriminating. Like, did I did I ever tell you guys about the time Jenna dropped half a gallon of ranch dressing on the carpet outside the youth room?

That stain was there for years until we finally replaced the carpet. Or maybe you've heard about the time I accidentally set the dumpster on fire, the day we were celebrating Bob Blahnik's last day on staff. Turns out it only cost $250 to replace the burned out dumpster. It's cheap in my view. And there was there was that time that Jen and I were in Spain.

We were on the, you know, the Spain serve and learn trip. We borrowed the missionary's car so we could, like, get away, just the two of us for a bit, and we got a flat tire. And so flagged down a police officer, not realizing, a, we don't speak any Catalan, and we don't know if it's legal for us to be driving in Spain. And the police officers couldn't help us. They didn't have the right tools, and so the missionaries had to call a friend who's also an animal trainer.

So he shows up with a whole bunch of lizards, a baby deer, and the wrong tools. Oh, man. There was that time that a group of us, we were in Kyiv, on a mission trip supporting Kyiv Theological Seminary. At our first dinner, we were all still jet lagged, and so Jenna and one of the other members of the team ordered a meter long pizza thinking it was a foot long pizza. Have you ever had a Ukrainian waiter show up with a three foot wide pizza for two?

Oh, man. There was there was another trip to Ukraine. The team this time, it was all women. They were leading a women's retreat for staff and students, and we were asked to carry cash. Not me, my wife was asked to carry cash to, the seminary because if they, like, direct deposited it from here in The States, the government would see it and then the bribes would have to go up and all that stuff.

So so Jenna and Jana Baker, like, we got a check for $50, deposited in our bank account, and then they went to four different banks in a row in Indy getting cash and putting it in a backpack until one of the tellers was like, are you fleeing, like, a domestic abuse thing? Like, is she helping you get away? What's going on here? How many of you guys were here the time we sang a whole bunch of songs in a row with the phrase name of Jesus in them, and then I got up and said, hey, good morning everyone. My name is Jesus.

I did that twice. But, you know, the the the real stories, the ones that still floor us are the ones, just with all the grace that you've shown us, from when Anna was a toddler and uncle Mark and Kim would take her to the Children's Museum every year at Christmas. Ten years ago, missus Waltz promised me she's a junior high Sunday school teacher, and she promised me that she would serve until Anna made it all the way through, which she will in about three weeks. And Don's taught her all the way. And Jenna's been serving on the worship team for the whole fifteen years we've been here.

She has led us in worship more times than I've gotten up to preach. Actually, my favorite input feedback, you know, comments I've gotten from anyone was someone who said like, and this was reported to me, and just like, you know, we'll be fine. Right? God takes care of his church. Don't get too attached to pastors.

They move on. It'll be okay. A new pastor will come. But how are we gonna replace Jenna's voice? And I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. When we went through our, our second trimester miscarriage back in 2015, you all showed up. You were there with you were there in the hospital. You were there with meals.

You were there in prayer. You supported us. And, you know, that little baby's birthday would be this Thursday. He'd be nine. It's a shared story, and it's it's hard to think about leaving knowing we have a child in the ground here in Indianapolis.

We've done fifteen years of life together. We've been to your weddings and we've been to your funerals. Obviously, not any of yours. You know what I mean. We've been to your houses.

We've eaten at your tables. We've shared drinks in your backyards. We've prayed for you. You've prayed for us. We wish we could convey, you know, to each person individually, the blessing you've been to us and this blessing to you.

But time you know what? Actually I'm ignoring that thing today. Why not? Thanks for that. But realistically, time is a limiter and I can only do what a priest would do, address the crowd, but say it to each of you.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine on you. The Lord lift up his face to you, and you, and you, and each of you. You know, this is characteristic of of covenant language. It's the language used to describe God's relationship with his people, that he he blesses the whole by blessing individuals, and he blesses individuals by blessing the whole.

But what I love about this blessing, the thing about it is it's not a it's not a wish or a prayer on the part of the priest. It is a declaration of what God is doing. It is not a wish for what he might do or could do. If you read this blessing in multiple translations, you'll notice that the vast majority of them avoid using any translation that even hints at this being a request. So very few of them say anything like, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

Almost all of them are trying to get across the sense of the Hebrew verbs here. This is a binding blessing. It's like the blessing of the patriarchs. Once it's given, you can't take it back. Like, I gave it to you.

It's yours now. It's in one commentary called it. It's an oracle. It's a declaration of what God is doing. The priest is announcing to the congregation, this is what God is doing.

This is what he says he's doing. This is the outcome of everything we just went through this day, this day of atonement. So we don't have to pray, Lord, please bless us and keep us. You know? Or wish, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

It's a declaration. It's a statement of fact of what God is doing, not not a hope or a prayer for what might come in the future. The Lord Yahweh will. He is blessing you by keeping you. That's what atonement means.

The Lord Yahweh will. He is making his face shine on you by being gracious to you. That's what atonement means. The Lord Yahweh, he will. He is lifting his face up to you by giving you peace.

That's what atonement means. And in all three of these lines, you'll notice that the first phrase is defined by the second one. The Lord Yahweh will bless you by keeping you. Keeping is that word for exercising great care over something, guarding it, protecting it, paying attention to it. The last time I led a mission trip to Spain, we had 14 people on the team, and I was responsible for everyone's passports.

They were always with me in the backpack that I always wore or was locked up in my room, exercising care, keeping it until I fell asleep on a bus. And then when we got out to our destination, it was a little groggy, and I just got up and walked off and left the bus on the bag. No. Left the bag on the bus with all the passports still in it. And then the student getting off the bus behind me was like, hey, you forgot your back.

And I was like, oh, thanks, man. My book was in there. I don't think I've ever admitted until now that I did that. But God is blessing by keeping, by never failing at keeping his attention, his careful attention on each of us. And in the second line, the Lord Yahweh will make his face shine upon you by being gracious to you.

It's God's grace. It's his unearned, undeserved favor that can really only be described poetically in these terms of his face shining on you. And we all know what that looks like. We talk about someone's face lighting up when they see someone they love or beaming at someone. Obviously it's not that when you're, you know, looking on someone with love or looking at the the person you love that your faces actually get physically brighter.

Right? And a luminometer is not gonna read a change or anything. But light is the best metaphor for it. When God is gracious, when he gives us good things we know we don't deserve, that we could never earn, we feel like we do when someone's face lights up when they look at us and smile. It's one of those best feelings in the world.

And it's closely echoed in the third line, the Lord Yahweh will lift up his countenance, lift up his face, by giving us peace. You know, in in Hebrew figures of speech, to look down is to be angry at the other person. To look away is to be disinterested. I'm not getting involved. But to look up, to lift up your face, is to decide to fight for the person.

God lifting up his face to us. Is God intentionally moving toward us, stepping in to fight for us, to bring victory to us, to bring us peace? And you know when you see that word peace in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew scriptures, remember that's not the kind of peace that just comes when there's no fighting, right? Like when siblings finally stop fighting because they fell asleep. It's not peace, that's just the absence of conflict.

This peace is more than just no fighting. It's the positive. It's the building together of something. It's the wholeness, the integratedness that can't be faked. It's like the sound of a, you know, perfectly tuned high performance engine.

Like that's peace. Or the sight of an Olympic team working together in perfect unison. Or you know, that you taste that dish that's been perfectly prepared cooked in seasons. Just everything works together. That's the kind of shalom, the peace that that God is talking about here.

It's an individual peace, but a piece that belongs to the whole community. And when each individual is well within himself or herself and each contributes to to the whole, every aspect of the community, it's it's economic life and it's religious life, it's civic life, it's it's judicial life, it's all working together so that each individual can be free, truly free, to pursue a life lived to the glory of God, and without fear of harm or or want or sickness. This peace is this deep and lasting and whole person, whole community wholeness, something we can never achieve on our own, but that God is fighting for for us. So the Lord Yahweh will he is blessing you by exercising his special care and his attention over you. The Lord Yahweh, he will he is looking upon you with shining eyes, but giving you grace abundant and undeserved and unearned.

The Lord Yahweh is lifting his head towards you and fighting for your peace, and that's the blessing. But maybe the best part of the blessing is the promise that comes with it. Verse 27, God tells Moses to tell Aaron, this is how Aaron and his sons, the priests, will put my name upon the people, and I will bless them. This is how Aaron and his sons were annually every year to put the name of Yahweh on the people. You know, Yahweh is God's special name.

It's the name he only revealed to his people, to Israel. It's a a name that comes from the the verb, you know, I am, but it's a name that means, you know, I am the one who is here. I am the one who will be here with you. No matter what comes in the future, no matter what situations we face or hardships or joys or or losses, God's own name means I am the one who will be here with you. Every year at the end of the day of atonement, the priest stands up and imparts God's blessing to his people, and once again God's own name and the promise contained within his name is placed on his people again.

It's like a vow renewal ceremony between God and his people. Israel says, we are your people, and God says, I am the one who is with you. I am the one who will be here with you forever. It's a it's a promise only God can make. We can't make that same promise because we won't be around forever.

We can emulate that promise, and I think we're we're really never more like God than when we are making and keeping a promise like that, but we can never perfectly fulfill it into eternity, which is why the words of this blessing aren't just given to Aaron. They're given to Aaron and his sons. Priests come and go. Eventually, Aaron is a distant memory. He's remembered, but he's remembered it remembered as a story from the past.

And each priest who comes after him isn't there to make a name for himself either. Each is there to elevate the name of God, the one who will always be there. And I can't wait for the day that Jen and I come back on a visit and she gets to sing and and I get to speak, And the guy in charge tells us before we get up, hey. Be sure to introduce yourselves. Most of the people here don't know who you are.

Pastors, we're not the source of the blessing. We're just a conduit for it. We're not the craftsmen. We're just the tools. I can't grant you a blessing, but I can convey to you the blessing that God already has for you.

If you're a follower of Jesus, of God's son who came to rescue us, take our sin away, reconcile us to God, then God has lifted up his face and given you peace. His smile shines on you. He's keeping you and he will bless. Would you stand for the blessing? The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.