The Lord’s Day
February 1st, 2004
Hear then the word of God as we find it in the sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers, beginning at the 22nd verse, reading to the end of the chapter.
“Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, “Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them: The LORD bless you, and keep you; The LORD make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.” So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them.’”
And then from the Book of the Psalms and the 67th, these same words given in Numbers as a royal declaration are now turned into a prayer. The people of God consider that blessing which He has declared and they make it the foundation of their prayer. But notice here that it is joined with the promise made to Abraham when they see that God’s intent is to bless them, that they might in turn become a blessing to all the nations on the face of the earth. How sobering it is, and how very sad to have heard what was told to us early this morning reminding us of that dark truth: that as we heard the word of God read to us, 4 billion and more people on the face of the earth have never heard that or seen that light. God blesses us that we might be a blessing to all the nations on the face of the earth. Life is given to us that darkness may be dispelled elsewhere. Again hear the word of God in the 67th Psalm.
“God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us. That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For You will judge the peoples with uprightness, And guide the nations on the earth. Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.”
Here ends the Scripture reading of the day. May God the Holy Spirit help us in our understanding of it.
These words from Numbers 6 are the text of our message here this morning, and I am very, very confident that most of you have heard these words many times over. This is a very familiar text. So familiar, in fact, my guess would be that a good number of you would’ve been able to repeat it to me by memory; not perhaps because you’ve made a special study of the words, but simply from the fact that you have heard them time and again in the setting of public worship, and normally at its conclusion. And even if you could not have repeated to me the whole of this text, my guess is you would surely be able to fill in the blanks if I began to say it and left out a few words. “The Lord bless you and—” I think you could’ve gotten it. I see some of you saying it already and we could’ve gone on. They are very, very familiar words to us.
It is just for that reason that we might not understand them. We have heard them so much. They are so familiar to us that surely there is nothing new here, is there? You’ve heard them before. There are no difficult words to be found in it. So what more is there to say? You’ve heard them. You know them. You’ve memorized them. And yet it is often the case that the things that are most familiar to us can be among those that are least understood. In this case, familiarity, if it doesn’t breed contempt, could at least breed indifference. And indifference is really just a polite form of contempt because we just treat it indifferently, of no great consequence. And yet to look closely at these words is to see God intended these words to be of eternal consequence in your life.
I think another thing that works against our appreciation of these words is that when you hear them it’s normally at the end of the service. And by that time, so far as most people are concerned, whatever the important thing is about that service, it’s over by now and we are ready to move on. We are going out. Ladies are worried about what had been placed in the oven before they left, wondering if the oven came on on time, wondering how the dinner is making its way. Men might have other things on their minds. Some might have the immediate concern of figuring out how we’re gonna beat the rush out of the parking lot. Some may be even tempted to try to scoot out even during the last verse of the last hymn to get a jump on the crowd along the way. It comes at the end of the service. The important stuff is over, isn’t it? Or is it? Maybe we should take a closer look at the words.
What was it that God intended to accomplish with these words? I think the closer we study it, the more we’ll see there’s something very, very special about these words. And to get at that, I’d like to make four points for you here this morning. I think the first two are fairly obvious, maybe familiar as well; the next two are probably not so familiar, maybe just a little bit off the beaten path, maybe taking you a little bit deeper than just what hearing them might have given you by way of understanding. Again if we look at all four together, I think you’ll see that three of them come right out of the text that’s given to us, and the fourth is known from its context, from its appearance here in the Book of Numbers: where it is placed here, when it is to be used in the life of the people of God. So let’s look at these four things together.
A good number of my years of education were spent in close study of a discipline known as philosophy. And there are philosophers who take a great deal of interest in language, words, how they’re used, how they’re put together. One philosopher took a special interest in what are called “performative utterances.” These words were very interesting to him because these words accomplish what they are about, words like promises. If I were to promise you today that you would be out by 12:00…I’m not making that promise, but if I were to make that promise, I would accomplish it by the very words themselves. By saying, “I promise that you’ll be out of here by 12:00,” I have made that promise. I just didn’t describe it with the words; I actually accomplished it in the saying of the words. I made a promise by saying it. And God is in this text making the statement of the priest on his behalf, a performative utterance. When the priest says them, God says, “I then will bless the sons of Israel.” God intends it as a blessing. You can see, therefore, that it would really be a shame to leave the service before the blessing had been given, wouldn’t it?
What sort of blessing does God have in mind? The Lord
blesses us and keeps us.
And what sort of
blessing does God have in mind? Well, look at what He has to say there: “The
LORD bless you, and keep you.” Would it mean something to you to leave this
door today and know that as you go you are kept by God? We saw how these words
turned into a prayer in Psalm 67. They’re other places in the Bible where these
words come to the fore. One of them is a whole collection of psalms that we
call “the Psalms of Ascent.” They’re found beginning in Psalm 120 and moving
on. And in Psalm 121 we’ll see this word keeping recurring again and
again. “The Lord will keep you from all evil. He who keeps Israel will neither
slumber nor sleep.” You’ve got a 24-hour watchman appointed for your keeping,
and the One who keeps you is the Lord God Omnipotent who reigneth. “He will
keep you from all evil.” You go out into the world surrounded by the presence
and the power of God, so that the blessing which He intends for you in your life
will be sure to abide with you and be for you when you get to the Promised
Land.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is really telling us the same thing when he celebrates at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things.” (Romans 8:32) So we have the assurance that “neither tribulation nor distress, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus”…because He keeps us. The Apostle Peter blesses God because there is, he says, “laid up for us an inheritance in heaven which is imperishable and will not fade away,” he says, “kept in heaven for you.” And then he goes on to say, “You who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” God is keeping for you a salvation, and He is keeping you for that salvation, so that as you go into the world you have the assurance that nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God which is Christ Jesus. The Lord blesses us and keeps us.
He makes His face to shine upon us.
He makes His face to
shine upon us. What does that mean? Well, at the most fundamental level it
means this: God smiles…and He smiles at you. All of you probably know people to
whom God has given such a beautiful smile that just to look upon that smile is
to realize things can’t be all bad, that to have the opportunity to look upon
that face and to look upon that smile is to know that there is blessing in the
world whatever else may be wrong. And possibly there are times when you can
remember that there were people whom you had offended and you worried that the
relationship was broken. You now rue the day that you made that offense because
you now realize that that relationship is so precious to you that life is not
worth living without it. And as you prepare your repentance, you frame your
apology, and you go to that person. To find that he or she is smiling is
suddenly to see the world turn around.
And that’s just the way it was for the Prodigal Son, wasn’t it? He had taken his share of the father’s wealth, and he had gone into the far country, but he had wasted it in riotous living. And when it was all gone, he became hungry, and he longed to eat of the food that had been given to the pigs. Oh, how far a Jewish boy can fall when he leaves the father’s house and ends up with empty pockets longing to eat what is given to pigs. But it was given to him in the far country by the grace of God to come to himself. And when he did, ‘How much better off are hired servants living in my father’s house than I am living in this far country? I will go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I am not worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And so he packed his bags and he came. And while he was yet afar off, his father saw him. And when he got to that house, he found a welcome, a reception. He found joy and celebration. The father’s face was shining upon him.
He is gracious to us.
He makes His face to
shine upon us and He is gracious to us. There’s a lot to be said about His
grace, and more than we could say in any one sermon. But we’ll get to the heart
of it when we remember that grace is undeserved favor. What we deserve from God
is rejection. Like the Prodigal we have taken the gifts of God, life and breath
and everything, and we have used them in our selfish ways, and we have not
returned to God all that is due to Him. We have not loved Him with all our
hearts and soul and mind and strength, and whatever portion of our love we have
given elsewhere has been robbing God of that which is His due. And yet in the
far country it is given to us to come to ourselves, and to realize how much
better off we will be in the Father’s house, and we too make our way home. And
the Father smiles at us and is gracious to us, forgiving us our sins.
Indeed that we might be encouraged all the more, He took the worst sinner that the world had ever seen—the Apostle Paul, the chief of sinners—and he was chosen, as the Apostle explains to us “for that very reason,” “in order that in him at the foremost Christ Jesus might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for all those who would believe in Him for eternal life.” He makes His face to shine upon us and He is gracious to us. Oh, if you could be sure of that…and he says you can because His priests are to tell you.
He lifts up His countenance upon us and gives us peace.
And He lifts up His
countenance upon us and gives us peace. Now in Hebrew the same word for
countenance is used for face. English translators for some reason
prefer always to change it—nothing wrong with that, both will do, gives a little
variety. Well, what’s the difference between lifting up your face and making it
to shine? Well, to lift up the face, you see, is “to fix the gaze,” to
look right into somebody’s eye that they might know that they’re at the very
center of the attention. He lifts up His face upon you. He can see you right
where you are. I can see more of you than you realize. You can actually see
faces up here, you know. If you’re not paying attention and you fall asleep, I
can tell. God can look right into your face from the distant heavens because He
fills the heavens and the earth. For Him to lift up His face upon you is to
look directly at you.
And if He does, perhaps you’re wondering what’s in His mind. You’ve come across into His viewfinder, as it were. You’ve appeared in His cross hairs. He’s got missile-lock upon you. But what does He have under that trigger? He lifts up His countenance upon you and gives you peace. If I said it in Hebrew it would be shalom. And if I said “shalom” and you were Hebrew and then you heard me say it in English, you’d have said, “You left out an awful lot,” because there’s a lot more to shalom than the English peace can convey. For us peace is kind of an absence of conflict. It’s the absence of those things that hinder the enjoyment of life. But shalom is not just the absence of all that takes away, hinders and harms; shalom is the presence of all that makes for joy and goodness and uprightness in the world. It’s the presence of every blessing. When the Hebrew wishes shalom upon another person, he is wishing for him everything that God has to give. If you want to meditate upon it, just go back over the words of the anthem that the choir has just sung about the joy in the morning, about the glory that will shine, about contentment and peace and forgiveness—all of those things, and even with that we fall short. God puts you in His viewfinder. He catches you in His sights, and He gives you peace. That’s the blessing that is to be put upon the people of God. You wouldn’t want to miss it, would you?
II. The blessing is in the words.
Now the second thing to
realize is (And it too, I think, is fairly obvious, but these are the words of
God.): It’s God who authorizes the saying of these words. These are His
words. He wrote the script, and preachers are just to follow it. This is not a
place to be creative. God wants the message delivered, and it performs what it
talks about as it’s given. It comes to us from God. It’s not my blessing for
you. You know, you become a preacher and people want you to bless their food
when you go to their house. I’m just not capable of doing that. I’m happy to
ask God to bless the food, but there’s really not much I can do for it. Anybody
can cook better than I can cook. There’s nothing I can do to make the food
better that’s set in front of me. I’m happy to ask God to bless the food, but I
have no authorization simply to say, “Food, be blessed!” And God hasn’t given
me those words, but He did give me words to bless you. They’re His words. I
have to speak them, but He sends me here to do that; because when you go out He
wants you to know you were blessed, and the saying of it gets it done.
III. The benediction: God’s name placed upon His people.
Now the third thing is,
as I said, perhaps just a bit unfamiliar. But it’s here in the text too, and
you see it down in verse 27, “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of
Israel.” Or the verb might have been translated, “So they shall put or
place My name on the sons of Israel.”
The benediction is like unto a baptism. It’s not a repeat of it. Baptism is a once and for all event, but this benediction shares with baptism the giving of the name of God. We are baptized into the name of God, and in the pronouncement of the priestly benediction God’s name is placed upon His people.
Now of what benefit is that? Well, Proverbs 18:10 will tell you that, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and are safe.” God’s name is a great blessing given to us, and I hope you can appreciate here if you’re looking in your Bible that this really is God’s name. It’s not just another of His titles. Now as it’s given to us here in English, it just comes out as “the Lord”; but you wouldn’t be able to distinguish that in hearing from the Hebrew word Adonai, which is “the Lord.” If you look at in your Bible, you’re able to distinguish it because when God’s personal name appears, which if we pronounced it would’ve been something like Yahweh (at least that’s the consensus of the scholars today); that is not Adonai.
Yahweh is His personal name; Adonai is a title, “Lord,” and it’s shared by little lords too. Other people could’ve been called Adonai. He is the Adonai to be sure, but that’s one of His titles, and He has many titles. And each one of them unveils to us something of His holy character. His titles are precious to us but His name more so. His name has been given to us from the beginning of the world. From the days of Seth, we are assured in Genesis that people were calling upon the name of Yahweh.
And yet the strangest thing is said to us in the sixth chapter of Exodus: that by His name, Yahweh, He did not make Himself known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but by His title, as it were, El-Shaddai. That’s a funny thing to say because, if you read the text of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they knew the name. They called upon the name. It wasn’t as if they were in the dark about His name. When Melchizedek came to bless Abraham, he blessed him in the name of El-Elyon, God Most High. And Abraham responded to Him in the name of Yahweh El-Elyon, Yahweh, the God Most High. He gave Him a personal name. He wasn’t an unknown God. He wasn’t just a distant deity. He had a name.
Well, why would Moses say that by that name He didn’t make Himself known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Well, for this reason, my friends: God’s name may have been known but it’s meaning had not been given, because its meaning was to be given through events, and the events through which the name Yahweh would be revealed were the events of salvation. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob only had it by way of promise; Moses and his generation would live through it. They would see the plagues fall upon Egypt as the kingdom of darkness and evil was destroyed by the power of God that the people might go free. And then He would bring them to Himself in the wilderness and join Himself to them in a holy covenant, promising to be their God and claiming them to be His people. And then He would set before them the glorious inheritance of the Promised Land which we know the New Testament understands to be the promise of all of creation, because Romans 4 tells us that the promise made to Abraham was that he would be the heir of the cosmos. The whole universe is promised to the people of God, renewed and made into a new creation. The whole curse has been lifted, and that is what is promised to us. They’ll be joy on that morning! There’ll be joy everywhere! And all of that had been promised, and that’s what His name means, you see.
To know His personal name is to remember His work as a Savior, as a covenant God and as the Guarantee of your inheritance. His name is placed upon you so that you will know the inheritance is yours and that it’s secure. That’s big.
IV. This benediction occurs in the Book of Numbers.
And, finally, the last
point is simply to observe that this benediction occurs in the Book of Numbers.
Now the Book of Numbers is probably not so familiar to you. As familiar as this
text is, my guess is that a lot of you would not have known what book of the
Bible it came from. Part of that reason is, it’s on the other side of
Leviticus. If you try to read the Bible through in the course of the year and
begin at Genesis, you probably have lost the habit by the time you get to
Leviticus. If you made it out of Leviticus, probably the first two chapters of
Numbers are enough to trip you up because—that’s where the book gets its name in
English—there are a lot of numbers there, and they total up all the men of war
who could carry arms in their day, each of the Twelve Tribes of the sons of
Israel. There’s an awful lot going on there, and that bores people. I mean,
does it really matter how many armed soldiers there were in the Tribes of
Benjamin? Is that going to help you today as you go out?
Well, people give it up…but the Book of Numbers is a whole lot more than that. The Hebrews call it the B'midbar; it means “in the wilderness.” It’s a book about the wilderness journey. It’s the book about moving from Mount Sinai out into the wilderness to make their way to the Promised Land. It’s the book about the world in which we live, at least if you’re like me, on the way to the Promised Land. We’re not there yet. We’re in the wilderness. And this is the book for the people in the wilderness. Now while they were at Mount Sinai there had been a terrible sin committed and they had worshipped a golden calf. It was like on their honeymoon, the wife had gone off and committed adultery. It looked like the end of the covenant, but God had been pleased to forgive their sin through the intercessions of the mediator. He claimed them once again as His own, and they began to make the holy Tabernacle, and gave themselves in obedience. And as they did according to all that God had commanded, He was pleased to come down out of heaven and take up His residence in their midst, and that holy Tabernacle became the dwelling place of God in their midst. There He lived. But now, my friends, they’re going out. They’re leaving Mount Sinai and the mountain that shook and blazed with fire. They’re going out into the wilderness with its fiery serpents, its lack of water, where there is no bread. They’re going out into the challenges of life. Will God be with them? The word assures them that God goes with them. Here too in this first part of Numbers—because the latter part tells us of their many sins and failures once again. They are a weak people as we are.
But here for a moment that they were at Mount Sinai they continued their obedience. When God told them to count up the soldiers, they did it. And they did it just as God had commanded. That’s how chapter 1 ends. And He gave them more instructions in chapter 2, and they did it just as God commanded. And more instructions came in 3 and 4 and at the end of 4 you read it again, “Just as God had commanded, so the sons of Israel did.” And we find it again in chapter 8 and chapter 9: “According to what God had commanded, so he did.” They were gathered at Mount Sinai. Sure, they would sin, but God had forgiven their sin. And now they had renewed their commitment: they gave themselves to God.
And I hope that’s what you did here today; because if you did, my friends, then as you go out into the wilderness, you too may be assured that, “The LORD bless you, and keep you; / The LORD make His face shine on you, / And be gracious to you; / The LORD lifts up His countenance on you, / And gives you peace.” Are you going His way? Are you headed to the Promised Land? You gonna follow Him faithfully in the wilderness? Then go with this assurance: ‘The LORD blesses you, and keeps you; makes His face to smile upon you, and is gracious to you. He lifts up His countenance on you, and gives you peace now and forevermore.’ Amen. Let’s pray.
O Lord, lead us in the wilderness, and give us assurance that as we go You go with us, and Your blessing is upon us as Your name is placed upon us. May we live with that faith and hope all our days. We ask it through Christ our Savior. Amen.
After you receive the
benediction today, let me invite you to sit and hear those words once again as
this time they come to you by the choir. Now I speak by the authorization of
the King of the ages, the King immortal, invisible, the only God, to whom
belongs honor and glory forever and ever. May Yahweh bless you and keep
you. Yahweh make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
Yahweh lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace now and
forevermore. Amen.
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Guide to the Morning Service
We welcome to First Presbyterian Church this morning and evening, Dr. Mark E. Ross, Associate Pastor for Teaching at the First Presbyterian Church (Associate Reformed Synod) in Columbia, South Carolina. Mark is here with his lovely wife Connie. He brought two great messages on “Building Our Lives Upon the Rock” at the Mid-South Men’s Rally on Friday night. Dr. Ross has served the First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, since 1984 and has just been named a Professor of Theology at Erskine Theological Seminary. He has lectured in theology and ethics at various seminaries, including Erskine, Reformed Theological Seminary, and the Ebenezer Theological Seminary in Tampico, Mexico. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (B.A.), the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and the University of Keele in England (Ph.D. in philosophy). Mark and Connie are the parents of two married children and have two grandchildren.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace . . . (Eph. 1:3-6)
This prayer says much about the worship of the earliest Christians. It shows the consciousness that the first Christians had of the ultimate significance of their worship. They understood themselves to have been destined and appointed to live to the praise of God’s glory (Eph. 1:12).” (Hughes Old)
The Call to Worship
Biblical worship is always a
response to God’s gracious revelation of Himself to His people. Hence, all our
worship services begin with a scriptural “call to worship” (that is, the content
of the “call” comes from God’s own word quoted and pronounced by the minister).
In this “call” we are reminded that God always takes the initiative. He always
comes toward His people first, in grace. Our worship is a reflexive and
deliberate response to His gracious call.
The Old Testament Scripture Reading
At virtually every morning
service, a minister reads a substantial section of Scripture. The public reading
of the Bible has been at the heart of the worship of God since Old Testament
times. We generally read consecutively though Bible books. We are currently
reading through the Book of Proverbs.
This guide to worship is written by the minister and provided to the congregation and our visitors in order (1) to assist them in their worship by explaining why we do what we do in worship and (2) to provide them background on the various elements of the service.