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Yahweh Blesses You in His Gracious Presence

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Clément Tendo
July 28, 2024

Sermon Manuscript

Yahweh Blesses You in His Gracious Presence


Clement Tendo
Numbers 6:22-27

Good evening everyone!
Today, we will be looking at a familiar passage.
Maybe like me you’ve heard it all your life.
But have you thought about it?
I hope that when we hear it read and preached, you’ll hear it afresh and that it will awaken your heart and mind to God’s goodness towards us in Christ.
Our Text is from Numbers 6:22-27 and is known as the Aaronic Blessing.
It is a blessing that was given to God’s people during their wandering in the wilderness, usually after sacrifices were offered.
It was God telling His people that, even in their wandering, He gives them a blessing, on account of the sacrifices offered on behalf of God’s people.
In the New Testament, it becomes clear that all these sacrifices pointed to Jesus, our perfect sacrifice; as such, these blessings are only experienced in Jesus Christ.
The word blessing also known as “benediction” comes from the Latin word “benedictio.”
It’s derived from the words “bene” (meaning “good”) and “dicere” (meaning “to say”).
Pronouncing a blessing is declaring a good word upon God’s people.
In our passage, it was not the priests who blessed the people with their own blessing.
Instead, God Himself blessed His people, through the priests.
Before we read God’s Word, let us pray:
Father, we thank you for your unconditional love toward your people.
We thank you that you are a God who delights in blessing your people.
How we pray that you would open our hearts to your word and that through it you would bless us by making us who we are not and giving us what we don’t have.
Through your word, show us Christ and Him give us more of yourself, by the power of the Spirit.
In Christ’s name we pray, amen!

Now hear God’s word from Numbers 6:22-27:
22 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel:
you shall say to them,

24 The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
27 So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

The title of our message is:
Yahweh Blesses You in His Gracious Presence

Three points for today:
(1) Yahweh Blesses You with His Protection (verse 24);
(2) Yahweh Blesses You with His Gracious Presence (verse 25);
(3) Yahweh Blesses You with His Peace (verse 26).

Along the way, we will see how we can be partakers in Yahweh’s blessing and the responsibility that we have as partakers in this blessing.
Point 1: Yahweh Blesses You with His Protection (verse 24);
One Theologian said:
“…to bless God is to acknowledge gratefully what he is;
but to bless man, God must make of him what he is not, and give him what he [does not have].”
In other words, when the LORD (Capital L.O.R.D) blesses his people, He makes them who they are not and gives them what they do not have.
In verses 24-26 “LORD” is repeated three times.
He wants to show that not anyone else but God Himself will bless His people.
Why does God alone have the prerogative to bless?
It is helpful to understand what this name “LORD” means.
LORD is the Hebrew Word “Yahweh” that no Jew dared to pronounce.
In traditional Hebrew Bible reading, the name YAHWEH is usually pronounced as Adonai.
YAHWEH is God’s covenant name.
It takes us back to Moses’s experience in Exodus 3, where God told Moses: “I am who I am.”
This name has a couple of implications:
Yahweh is eternal and self-existent:
We all need His grace to say who and what we are.
But God just IS without qualification.
We all have a birthday, a day we began to exist but Yahweh has no such a day;
Yahweh’s time is an eternal present.
Yahweh is the one who was, is and is to come.

This Yahweh is the loving Creator and Sustainer of all things.
He is above all things and He delights in relating to His people.
All creatures need Him.
Because he is eternal, He is the only one who can truly bless us and watch over us.
He has all that you and I need.
With all that God is, He faithfully does what is good always for His people.
Verse 24 says: “The Lord bless you and keep you;”

As we saw previously, to bless is to speak a “good word.”
And friends, it is one thing to hear a “good word” from an equal.
But it is something else when you hear a good word from someone you greatly respect and admire.
Don’t you want to hear an encouragement from your Parents?
your favorite artist?
And what about the Almighty God, the one who is in a class by Himself, who is holy, holy, holy (as we saw last Sunday)?
The children of Israel attributed all their prosperity to God’s good word.
In the Psalms we see that even the plants growing was as a result of God’s sustenance.
Israelites understood that they need this God.
But do you know one thing?
You cannot separate God’s blessing from his presence.
Unfortunately, we all naturally want God’s blessings without His presence.
A psychologist friend once told me that many of his patients are the children of the wealthy.
But they suffer from a high rate of depression and mental health issues.
Well, some of that he linked to the lack of parental presence with their kids.
In addition, many of these kids had the newest version of iPhones/devices, and the newest make of cars given by their parents.
However, their parents were rarely present, because they were always working or traveling abroad.
Maybe some of you may have experienced something like this.
Your parents worked hard to provide for the family.
This is not an opportunity for you to be bitter or angry with your parents.
And it is not a guilt-trip moment for the parents here present.
No, it is an opportunity to let you know that both the parents and the kids who feel abandoned have a Father in Yahweh.
He does more than bless us.
He also desires to dwell with us.
I want you to know that we have an ever-present God.
He is not a distant CEO or a very busy father who only sends gifts.
He is always with us.
This leads us to our second point.

Point 2: Yahweh Blesses You with His Gracious Presence (verse 25);
Verse 25 says:
“the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;”

Verse 25 could also be translated “The Lord make his face to smile upon you and be gracious to you.”
And you know “When God smiles on his people, they can be sure that he will be gracious to them, that is, he will deliver them from all their troubles.
He will answer their prayers and save them from their enemies, and sickness and sin.”
But you know one other thing that is implied in this verse?
Face is usually associated with God’s presence.
So, to say “the Lord make His face to shine upon you” is in a sense to say, “the Lord be gloriously present with you.”
You can only see a smiling face of someone who is with you.
In this case, you can see God if He chooses to reveal His glory to you.
Then can you have a tête-à-tête with God, as it were.
So, the shining face of God is associated with God’s glorious presence.
Friends:
you may know the joy that you experience when you are with a friend that you enjoy spending time with.
Psalm 16:11 tells us:
“11 You make known to me the path of life;
in Your presence there is fullness of joy;
at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”


Experiencing this fullness of joy changes how we go about life.
Moses understood this.
He knew that he and the people of Israel could not make it on their own.
He knew that if they were to be left alone, they would not be any different from other people.
He knew that Israel would only be special and different from the surrounding nations because of God’s gracious presence with them.
Exodus 33:15-16, 20-22 reads:
15 And he [MOSES] said to him [the LORD], “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people?
Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

20 But, he [the LORD] said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock,
22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.”

Now, if Moses’ concern was only getting to the Promised Land, he would not have spent all this time pleading with God to go with him and God’s people.
But Moses understood that the Promised Land would be a special place only because of Yahweh’s presence.
That’s why Moses asked the LORD to go with Israel.
He knew that the Promised Land without God would be as disastrous as Egypt itself.
And friends, many of our troubles are connected to the lack of God’s presence in our life, the lack of the sense of the reality of God in our lives.
And because of that we choose sin over God.
Wars and conflicts around the world are due to the fact that we think we can have God’s blessings without the God of the blessings.
And friends separating who God is from what He has given us is sin and it can never lead to real peace.
The Aaronic blessing teaches us that what makes a blessing a blessing is God’s presence with His people.
Prosperity gospel tells us that if we have the house of our dream, the most expensive car, the highest degree or any other thing, then we are blessed.
During this electoral season, politicians are promising that they will make the American dream a reality.
Yet, without God in the picture, the American dream that many of you work hard to attain can become a curse.
Yes, we ought to work hard to make better our lives.
Yet, God’s Word tells us that whether or not we attain the American dream, so long as we are walking with God we will still be eternally blessed.

The moment we think that we can live outside God’s presence, we plunge ourselves into great dangers.
This is acting like a fish that pretends to find life outside water.
What will happen to this fish?
Well, outside the water, the fish will inevitably die.
Because outside God’s presence His blessings will turn out to be a curse, we can’t have peace even when we think we have all the material possessions we ever dreamed off.
Unfortunately, the damages that we have caused running away from the presence of God cannot be repaired by any human being.
Why?
Because, as we have seen in Yahweh’s response to Moses, no one can see God’s face and live.
Only God must take the initiative.
What Yahweh tells Moses is the sinner’s only comfort.
Hear these words again from Exodus 33:21-22:
21 “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock,
22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.”

In 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul tells us that the Rock in which God hid Moses is Christ.
When we trust in Christ, we do not face God wrathful presence;
rather we experience His favorable presence and fullness of life.
John 3:16 reads,
“16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The question is, Have you found your hiding place in Christ, the Rock?
Have you trusted in Christ Jesus?

Point 3: Yahweh Blesses You with His Peace (verse 26)
When Yahweh’s blessings are joined to His gracious presence, the result is peace.
God looks at us favorably, He pays attention to us so that, as people who are cared for, we cannot but be at peace wherever we are.
Remember, God’s presence is not limited to time and space because Yahweh is I AM, He is “omnipresent,” meaning “present everywhere at the same time.”
Verse 26 says:
“the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

“the LORD Lift up His countenance upon you” means “the LORD pays attention to you.”
In other words, may He watch over you.
The word “countenance” is still the word that was translated “face” in verse 25.
This means that the same LORD who looks with favor on His people also moves to watch over and care for them.
You can see why it is not surprising that peace is the result.
The word translated “peace” is the Hebrew “Shalom.”
Shalom is more than a feeling;
it implies wholeness, total well-being, tranquility, calmness, serenity, health, security.
One theologian writes, “Peace (Shalom) means more than the absence of war.
It means well-being, health, prosperity and salvation:
in short, the sum total of all God’s good gifts to His people.”
This peace is gained only when we are in the presence of God.
In the New Testament we find a blessing that beautifully echoes the Aaronic blessing, and includes the entire Trinity.
In 2 Corinthians 13:14 we read:
14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

It means that it is only through the grace found in Christ that we can experience God’s love and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
And in fellowship with the Trinity, we find peace with God and with His people.
How can we be participants in Yahweh’s blessing?
What are the responsibilities that we have as partakers in this blessing?
Verse 27 says,
27 “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

It is only through Christ that we experience God’s grace and blessing.
If you have not trusted in Christ and continue to harden your heart, this message of blessing could become a curse to you.
But if you put your faith in Christ, even now, these blessings can become yours.
The implication is that you bear YAHWEH’s name just like a child bears his Father’s name.
This means that the eternal God to whom you belong as a child blesses eternally.
Bearing Yahweh’s name is a privilege, and it is also a great responsibility.
As God’s children, we must live our lives according to our father’s character.
We are to imitate our Father.
But we must never forget that the imitation of our God happens in union and communion with our ever-present God.

When my family and I lived in the village some time back, people did not usually ask me my name.
Instead, they said, “Whose son are you?”
After I told them my father’s name, they would say how much I resembled him.
Friends, those who believe in Jesus Christ have been blessed by Yahweh and bear Yahweh’s name.
People around us will see how we conduct ourselves, and ask whose children we are.
Will they see any reason to praise Yahweh?
Will they see any resemblance with our heavenly Father?
What if you ask yourself these questions and find out that that is not the case?
Then ask the LORD to bless you by making you who you are not and to give you what you don’t have.
Ask Him to transform your life into a new creation and to give the gift of faith to rely on Christ.
And the promise is that you will eternally experience fullness of joy and peace, the sum total of all the blessing that God is delighted to give.
May Yahweh be gracious to us and bless us.

Let us pray,
Dear LORD, we thank you for your blessing toward us.
By your Spirit, remind us of how much we are blessed.
Forgive us for thinking we can enjoy your blessings without you being with us.
And keep us in your presence, because only in your presence, there is fullness of joy.
Give us more of you even as you satisfy us with your unfailing love and peace.
In Jesus’s name we pray, amen!

Questions for Meditation and Discussion for this Week:
1. Read Numbers 6 (the whole chapter).
What is the relationship between Numbers 6:22-27 and the rest of the chapter?
Use Psalm 67; 2 Corinthians 13:14; and Ephesians 1:1-14 as you meditate on the blessings that God has given us in Christ.

2. Look again at the blessings in Numbers 6:22-27 and compare that to the pursuit of the “American Dream”.
What do you think about the promises of the “American Dream” (newest make of a car, better house, success, etc.)?
How does Yahweh’s blessing in Numbers 6:22-27 change how you pursue your life dreams?
What does “being blessed in God’s gracious presence” mean to you?
How can you practice the presence of God?

3. Read Ephesians 1:1-14 (or the whole chapter).
What blessings do you have in Christ?
How can this reminder change your relationships with your neighbors (family, friends, co-workers, etc.)?

4. Write a prayer that points you to God’s blessings, even as you work hard to serve God in family, community, and workplace.

After that, pray Psalm 67 in your heart language:
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,

your salvation among all nations.
3 May the peoples praise you, God;

may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,

for you rule the peoples with equity
and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you, God;

may all the peoples praise you.
6 The land yields its harvest;

God, our God, blesses us.
7 May God bless us still,

so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.


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