The Lord Bless and Keep You

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. This year, 2024, Lord willing, we'll make it through the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Hebrews. So glad to be with you. While we have some coffee, we'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray.
Lord, you are an amazing and gracious, generous, and loving God. We thank you for your word. I pray, Lord, that you would please help us to understand it this morning. Let us know the depths of your grace and the riches of your love. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, so we're at Numbers chapter 6. Just a short section. Numbers chapter 6.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. 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. So they shall put my name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them. What is this talking about, right? So A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So A, what's this about? This is the Aaronic blessing. This is the blessing that God commands Aaron to give to the people.
And there's really three parts of it, isn't there? The Lord bless you and keep you. This is the idea of the Lord protecting them, safeguarding them, watching over them. This is the Lord being about their well-being. So that's the first part. The second part, may the Lord's make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. This is this idea of God being favorable towards them. God looking upon them and him seeing them and he loves them and he's going to be gracious to them. He's not looking at them with anger or with malice or with hatred, but he sees his people whom he redeemed As the covenant king, he smiles upon his people. And then the third part, and the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
It's not just that he smiles at you like a king from a long way away and just waves at you but doesn't want anything to do with you. This idea of he lifts up his countenance upon you. It's this idea of he receives you. He doesn't just put up with you. but he gives you his approval.
Why does the Lord give his approval and give peace because he gives his approval? Because he's redeemed. Because he's the king. Because they're the people who are coming to him through the mediation of Aaron's priesthood. They're coming to him in holiness and he's glorified in it.
So his face smiles upon them. His countenance receives them and he blesses them. And in this, this is the part that's following this, verse 27. So they shall put my name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them. It's the idea that the Lord is going to take ownership of his people. He doesn't just kind of associate with us. He puts his name upon his people. This is this beauty of the blessing.
I don't know, I'm going to be really hard-pressed to underline a section of this. I guess if you really wanted to, you could just underline verse 23, speak to Aaron and his son saying, this is the way you shall bless the children of Israel, say to them. But then I would want to triple underline everything that comes following. This is my favorite benediction to say on Sunday mornings to the congregation.
Because no matter what it is, the difficult passage that I have to preach or the hard applications that need to be made, one of the things I want people to do as they walk out of church every Sunday morning is to remember that the Lord's face shines upon them, that He is gracious to them, that His countenance is upon them, and that He gives them peace because He's put His name on us. Some people actually who are kind of real sticklers about this type of things will say, and I understand this, will say, Brian, you're not a priest in the order of Aaron, and so you shouldn't say the Aaronic benediction. And I would go, okay. Okay, that's fine. I think Aaron's priesthood was pointing to Jesus's. And I think if this was true of Aaron's, then how much more true is it for us? I'm not going back to the Old Testament.
I think these passages are proven in the life and death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because Jesus is the one. who says, well done, good and faithful servant. Because Jesus is the one who says, come and enter into your eternal rest. Because it's Jesus whose face shines upon us now. It's Jesus who has marked us as his sheep. It's Jesus who has made us a blessed people. And it's Jesus who's made us a kingdom of priests. a royal nation. His face has been brought, has shined upon us. He has been gracious to us and he has loved us.
And so I hope that you marvel in this grace. I hope that you go out knowing that if you are loved of Jesus Christ, then the divine face does shine upon you and he is gracious to you and that you can have peace. Let's pray. Father, I know that there's a lot going on in people's lives. There's a lot of things people are struggling with, wrestling with, don't know how to deal with.
But Lord, we thank you so much that you are the king and that you have shined your face on your people. You have been gracious to us. and you have given us peace through your Son. So Lord, we pray that you would please apply these words to our hearts. May your name be written upon us, for we are your sheep. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, may God bless you. May you have comfort and peace as you go about today, knowing that the Lord has blessed you and will keep you. I'll see you next time. Bye.