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.
“So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
(Numbers 6:22–27)
This passage is likely very familiar to you. It is the Aaronic Blessing we proclaim as a benediction to close many of our corporate worship services. Perhaps you’re imagining it now – surrounded by your church family, hands raised, together. Perhaps you, like me, are longing for the day when we can all be together again. While there is no substitute for being physically together for corporate worship, our God and the blessings he proclaims to us in the gospel is not bound by this pandemic/quarantine.
There are three parallel couplets in this passage which provide three encouraging promises. Each of the promises builds on the previous one and each line lengthens, building to a dramatic crescendo. Over the next three days, I want you to see the blessings you have of God’s presence, perspective, and peace, three things we always need but perhaps feel our need for more acutely during this time.
Each of us instinctively knows the power of presence to comfort. When my children were much younger, I was playing doctor with one of them. I was pretending to cry after she gave me a shot for my cough (every ailment got a shot with a giggle). She rubbed by shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, Daddy, I will be with you.” Even a two-year-old knows the comforting power of presence. In essence, the Aaronic benediction is a promise of the presence of God.
It is important to appreciate the drama of the scene created in the Old Testament service by means of this benediction. After the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the fellowship offering were made, the priest would lift his hands and bless the people (Leviticus 9:22, 23). Notice that this blessing was commanded by God and given to the Aaronic priesthood as their exclusive prerogative (v. 23). Therefore, far from being incidental to the liturgy, the pronouncement of the benediction by the lifting of hands was as essential as the offering itself. Why? Because it was only upon Aaron’s lifting his hands that the people knew that their sacrifices had been accepted by God and their sins atoned for.
You can imagine the people peering at the priest as the service moved toward a close, nervously watching for the first movement of his hands to indicate that grace had once again gotten the victory. It would be like a signalman on land anxiously awaiting the first message from a ship returning from battle to announce victory. That explains why in Leviticus 9 the people fall to their faces in joy when Aaron lifts his hands to bless.
But there is more grace even than that promised in the blessing. After all, what does blessing really mean in the Bible? The word gets used so much in so many different ways, I think we sometimes lose sight of its precise biblical significance. My friend, Kelly Kapic, has written a very helpful article about blessing.1 Kapic’s particular focus is on Christ’s priestly benediction at the end of Luke wherein he lifts his hands and blesses his people.
So, what does the blessing actually say or promise? Blessing in the Bible conveys the assurance of the redemptive presence of God. When God blesses, he is promising to be with his people. Think of it just in Luke’s Gospel—Mary is blessed because God is with her and her Son is blessed because God is with him to accomplish redemption (Luke 1:42). And when people bless God, they are thanking him for his presence with them. Zechariah blessed God because redemption had come among the people (1:68), and Simeon blessed God because he held in his arms the salvation of Israel and the light of the Gentiles (2:28). And the children whom Jesus took in his arms experienced blessing because they were in the actual presence of God in the flesh (Mark 10:16).
So when Jesus lifted his hands at the end of Luke and blessed his disciples, what was he actually saying to them by that action? He was assuring that he would be with them to the end of the age even as he had told them in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). He was reinforcing what he had taught many years before through the psalmist that the Aaronic blessing promises the presence of God, which enables us to make his ways known to the ends of the earth (Psalm 67).2 There the psalmist assures that the ends of the earth will fear our God because God will bless us.
Here is what it means for you and me, friends. In Christ, God has blessed you, which means he has promised to be with you always. And that presence will accomplish an untold number of redemptive benefits like comfort, encouragement, courage, and enablement. We need all of those things, as we all have loved ones we are seeking to comfort as well, even if only from a distance.
God blesses you as he did his disciples, promising that his presence will make you capable of taking the Gospel to those he has entrusted to you. As he said to Joshua, “Do not fear, be very courageous, for I am with you.”
For more opportunities to pray and serve, please visit https://www.2pc.org/covid-19-response/.
- Kelly M. Kapic, “Receiving Christ’s Priestly Benediction: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Exploration of Luke 24:50-53,” Westminster Theological Journal 67 (2005): 247-60.
- See further echoes in Psalms 4:6; 24:5, 6; 29:11; 80; 115:12-15; 128; and 129:8.