Sermon

Click here to print this Sermon

June 6, 2004
The Holy Trinity
Numbers 6:22-27
Pastor Ben Berger

The LORD puts His Name on Us

The words of our text this morning are very familiar words. Even if you have never tried, you may have these words memorized. You know them because you hear them every week and at the close of every worship service. "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." Today we want to learn what those words mean for us. Thousands of years ago God prescribed to Moses how he wanted his people to worship. He told him how he wanted the Temple to look, what he wanted the people to do, and how he wanted the priests to lead. Aaron, his sons, and the Levites served as the priests. God even gave them the exact words to speak at the close of worship. God intended to use those words to bless his people, to put his name on them. To this day God still intends to bless his people with those words. Take note of the three phrases. This blessing shows how the three persons of the triune God work together to bless us and work out our salvation. With these words the LORD puts his Name on us. 1) The Father preserves us. 2) The Son saves us. 3) The Holy Spirit gives us peace. Let's see how the LORD blesses us.

First, the Father preserves us. The LORD bless you and keep you. To bless means to wish good things for someone. It's the opposite of to curse, which means to wish evil upon someone. The worst curse of all is to ask God to damn someone. God forbids us from using his name to curse. However, he wants us to use his name to bless. Of course, when the LORD blesses us, it's more than a wish. Our Father is the giver of all good things.

The Father gave us life. We praise him because we are fearfully and wonderfully made; he knit us together in our mother's womb. God actually took time to personally mold each one of us. He gave us our mother's eyes and our father's nose. He colored our hair and rosied our cheeks. He painted our smile and shaped our personality. Every part of us is a gift from God. How often we forget to thank him for being, for life! He made us.

The Father also preserves our lives. He gives us all we need to live and more. The LORD fills our bellies with food and our closets with clothes. He gives us our home and our family. It is the LORD that gave us minds to reason, hands to work and feet to go. He gives us those gifts so that we can work to provide for our families. We do nothing for ourselves because he gives us the ability to do; everything comes from God. If we struggle to pay our bills, it's only because we overextend ourselves. We think that we can have whatever we want; we demand blessings from God. Rather than trying to get more, God has given us the opportunity to thank him for all that we have. We don't have to worry because God has provided for all. The LORD blesses us.

The LORD also keeps us. He delivers us from all evil. When we think of evil, we most likely think of the evil in this world. We think of those who can hurt our bodies. We wear safety belts, lock our doors and keep the kids in after dark. We exercise, eat right and take our vitamins. We do all kinds of things to protect our bodies. And yes, God wants to protect our bodies too. He has sent thousands of powerful angels to guard us in all of our ways. But, our Father also thinks beyond this world.

The LORD keeps our souls. "Now I lay me down to sleep, and pray the LORD my soul to keep." That is exactly what our Father does with this blessing. The LORD watches over us so that the devil cannot harm us. We tend to doubt that God is with us. When things go wrong in life, we're not always sure that God is there. He promises that he is always with us, even to the end of the age. He promises that he will use even the evil in this world and in our lives for our good. He promises that he will take us to heaven. The LORD blesses and keeps us.

The LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. With second part of the blessing the second person of the Trinity puts his name on us; the Son saves us. The LORD make his face shine upon you. That's an odd statement. How does one's face shine? My face doesn't shine; your face doesn't shine. But we are talking about God's face. When Jesus was transfigured before his disciples, his face shone like the sun. When John saw Jesus in his revelation, he said that his face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance (Revelation 1:16). The Son makes his face shine on us and gives us light.

Without the Son we live in darkness. The first thing God created was light; one of the first things man created was sin and darkness. Ever since the fall of Adam all humans have been born in darkness; we are no different. Even though God was busy knitting us together in our mothers' wombs, we inherited the sin of our parents. While we may have the pretty eyes of our mother, we use those eyes to lust after the opposite sex and to covet our neighbor's property. We inherited our parents caring personality, be we also inherited their quick temper. We try to smile on the outside, but inside our sin is eating us away. We live in sin and know that we are cursed and damned to hell for it. The darkness threatens to overtake us.

Jesus took away the darkness of our lives and replaced it with his light. Jesus did more than just fill the holes of our darkness. He does more than shoot light through our dark spots. The truth is we don't have dark spots; we're completely dark. Not Jesus; he is completely light. He knew exactly the life that pleased the Father and he lived it in our place. He didn't just credit a few good works to our account; he fully replaced our lives with his. And, he fully removed our dark sin. His death on the cross once and for all washed us clean. The sin, the guilt, it's all gone. Now we have light. Like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration and like John in his revelation, we see what the Son has done for us. The LORD makes his face shine upon us.

And the LORD is gracious to us. Grace is undeserved love. When we see what the Son has done for us, we see God's love. We know that we do not deserve this love for one minute. We are ugly. When we look in the mirror, we see a sinner living a sinful life; we see nothing that could make God happy. We can't think of a single good reason that God should love us. Yet, he does love us. More than that he longs for us. He greatest desire is to be with us. He did everything necessary to make that happen. He loved us so much that he gave up his only Son to be with us. God had to choose between his son and us; he chose us. That's grace.

The third and final part of the blessing again talks about God's face. The LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace. This is the work of the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit gives us peace. Peace comes from seeing God's face.

There are any numbers of reasons we cannot see God's face on our own. We've already discussed one reason; because we're born with the darkness of sin, we are unable to see God's face. Sin covers our eyes. Even if we could see his face, we wouldn't want to. Sinful humans cannot look at God's face and live. Even the angels use their wings to cover their eyes in the presence of God. And, too often we are just unwilling to look at God. We'd rather look at ourselves in the mirror. We want convince ourselves that we are pretty people in good shape because of all the good things we do. Or we simply want to avoid the issue of dealing with God. Or we just don't care that much. In any case we don't look at God's face on our own.

The Holy Spirit turns the LORD's face toward us. This is not what we would expect. When you've done something to disappoint your parents, how do they look at you? When you've angered your spouse, how does she look at you? Most express disappointment by looking down and anger by looking away. That's not what God does. He looks up. The LORD looks us directly in the eye and asks us why we disappointed or angered him; he gives us a chance to confess our sins. Then he offers us forgiveness; he turns his face toward us.

The Holy Spirit gives us faith to receive his forgiveness. Left to ourselves we would refuse in arrogance or reject in disbelief; we would turn away or put our heads down. Instead the Holy Spirit lifts our faces to God. He changes our hearts so that they truly believe that God loves and forgives us. He opens our eyes so that we can see all that God has done for us. He opens our mouths to sing God's praises. He moves our hands and our feet to serve God. He changes our lives so that we want nothing more than to live for him who lived and died for us.

The Spirit's gift of faith leads to peace. When we finally stop looking at ourselves and begin looking at God, we'll have peace. When we realize that God loves us in spite of who we are and the way we act, we'll have peace. When we admit that we can't and that God does, we'll have peace. The LORD gives us peace.

With this rich blessing the LORD puts his name on us. Father, Son and Holy Spirit each show their desire to bless us. The LORD wants to give us all good things and he takes the responsibility to make it happen. This blessing is his promise to us. His name is the fulfillment of that promise. Whenever you see the name LORD spelled in all capital letters, he is reminding you of his faithfulness. This isn't any person's well wishes; it's not an empty 'I'll pray for you.' The LORD is blessing you. These words are more than a wish, they are real power. The LORD WILL bless you and keep you; the LORD WILL make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD will turn his face toward you and give you peace. Amen.