6/3/07 - Holy Trinity - Numbers 6:22-27

THE LORD BLESSES YOU
- Through the work of the Father
- Through the work of the Son
- Through the work of the Holy Spirit

I want you to fast forward in your minds for a second to what will happen at the end of the service today. What are the last words I am going to say to you before the announcement of the last hymn? The blessing, right? Every service ends with a blessing. And on most Sundays it’s the blessing that is recorded for us in our Old Testament lesson, Numbers 6. Do you remember the words of that blessing? Could you say them out loud with me by heart? “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look on you with favor and give you peace.” You know those words well. You know those words almost as well as you know the words to the Lord’s Prayer, don’t you? But let me ask you this: have you ever listened to those words? I know you hear them, but when was the last time you actually paid attention to them? If you’re anything like me, it’s probably been a while.
When I turn around at the end of the service, raise my hands, and begin to say, “The Lord bless you…” what do you do? Some of you glance up at the hymn board to see what the last hymn is going to be. Some of you even start flipping to that hymn before the words of the blessing are done, don’t you? A lot of you start thinking about what you’re going to do later this afternoon. Those of you on this side of the church remind yourselves how hot it gets in the sun. Others of you wonder how loud Emma is going to sing during the next hymn. And I imagine there a quite a few people who have their minds set on what kind of food there is going to be in between the service and Bible class. What other mundane thoughts run through your mind during the final blessing? There are a lot of things that we think about that have nothing to do with these precious words, and regrettably so.
Maybe we need to be a little more aware of the trivial things occupying our minds when the Lord is blessing us. Because when he blesses us at the end of each service the Lord specifically says in our text that he is putting his very name on us. He is promising us incredible blessings through the work of the Father, through the work of the Son, and through the work of the Holy Spirit. And so this blessing that you hear every week is really the culmination of the entire service! It sums up all of the gospel we heard in the hymns and the liturgy and the readings and the sermon. It sends us out into the beginning of another week with the sure promises of the Lord. These are quite possibly the most important and comforting words you hear when you are in the Lord’s house. Why do you think they have been a part of Christian worship services for centuries? Because they are that important! They are that beautiful! Don’t let these words slip by as they have been for years! Because when you do let them come and go without even a second thought, when you are thinking about different things, you are turning your back on the Lord when he is talking to you. You are plugging your ears like a little child and refusing to listen to your Father in heaven. You are letting the Lord know that you have better things to ponder than the unbelievable blessing he is giving you at that very moment.
I bring this up not only to point out a reoccurring sin that may have been undetected for years, but also to point out the gospel that has been waiting to be heard. Because the ironic thing is: the words of this blessing that we often times ignore, are the words of the gospel that forgive us for that sin. And so it is my prayer that by the end of this sermon you will fully understand the beautiful gospel words of this blessing and will be determined never to miss them again.
It is no coincidence that this text is chosen for Trinity Sunday. “The Lord bless you… The Lord makes his face… The Lord look on you…” And so it is also no coincidence that this three-part blessing corresponds with the work of the three persons of the Triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - in that order.
First of all, then, we will deal with the Father’s work indicated by the first phrase, “The Lord bless you and keep you.” When our Father pronounces a blessing on us - just as we talked about two weeks ago - that means he is giving us the sure promises of blessings to come. God the Father blesses us countless times throughout Scripture, including in Isaiah 46, “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (Isaiah 46:4). This is God the Father blessing you, his child. Promising you things that are to come. Throughout the Old Testament it was a common practice for Fathers to bless their children and this is exactly what our Father is doing for us here.
And so along with the Lord blessing us it is natural that the Lord also keeps us as well. Now the word “keep” in Scripture doesn’t just mean what we normally use that word for. We might say, “I’ll keep this shirt, but I’ll get rid of that one.” The biblical word “keep” means more than God will simply hold on to us and not get rid of us. That word really means to protect and to guard and to watch over those he loves. And nowhere in Scripture is this word more beautifully illustrated than in Psalm 121. In this Psalm consisting of only eight verses, the word translated “keep” in our sermon text is used five times. “He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you… The Lord will keep you from all harm… The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forever more.” This entire Psalm is really built around and can be summed up with that one extremely comforting word. The same word found at the beginning of the blessing. A word that describes a very important aspect of God the Father’s work. “The Lord bless you and keep you.”
The second phrase of this familiar blessing can easily be equated with the work of God the Son - Jesus Christ. “The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.” Please understand this: when the Lord makes his face shine on you, this is not just a generic phrase that covers a wide range of blessings. These are very specific words dealing with a very specific point. Because these words mean our forgiveness, these words mean our salvation! When the Lord makes his face shine on you that means the Lord saves you. And that’s not my own interpretation, that’s what Scripture says.
In Psalm 80, the writer Asaph says, “Restore us, O God, make your face shine upon us, so that we may be saved.” We would not be saved unless the Lord made his face shine upon us. He looks upon us and shows us mercy. And he is the only one who could do that. He is the only one who could save us from the depths of sin, and he is the only one who would ever want to.
Why would he want to? Why would he want to save unworthy sinners like us? Listen to the words of David in Psalm 31 that uses this same phrase, “Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your unfailing love.” David knew he was in a hopeless situation because of his sins. He knew that he needed the Lord’s face to shine upon him if he was to be saved. And he knew that the only reason the Lord would want to shine his face on him was because of his unfailing love. That unfailing love is the only reason Christ wanted to save us. A love that did not fail when Jesus was on this earth. A love that did not fail as he was being crucified outside of Jerusalem. A love that did not fail after three days in the tomb. A love that does not fail even now, even as we plague his love with sin after sin after sin.
That’s grace, isn’t it? Undeserved love. And so does it surprise you that the second part of Christ’s work in the blessing is “…and be gracious to you?” Grace - the unconditional and loving attitude of the Lord towards sinners. And so making his face shine upon us and being gracious to us are more or less saying the same thing. Because both of those phrases mean that we are forgiven, that we are saved. And Scripture clearly says that this work is attributed to Jesus Christ, God the Son, for “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
We have come to the final phrase of our blessing. The portion that corresponds to the work of God the Holy Spirit. “The Lord look on you with favor and give you peace.” If you noticed in your bulletin this phrase is translated a little more literally, “The Lord turn his face toward you.” And an even more accurate translation would be, “The Lord lift up his face to you.” And this is important point. Because if we look at the instances where the Lord lifts up his face to people elsewhere in Scripture, we’ll notice that in those contexts it means he accepts their requests. When God accepted the prayer of Abram for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah - it literally says he lifted up his face to Abram. When the prophet Malachi says that God does not accept worthless offerings - he really says that God does not lift up his face to them. And in Job 42 when we read that God accepted the prayer of Job - he lifted up his face towards him.
So why is this work attributed to the Holy Spirit? Because the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with every one of our prayers and requests. “We do not know what we ought to pray,” Paul says in Romans, “but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Rom. 8:26). The New Testament writer Jude also says, “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20). “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph. 6:18), we read in the book of Ephesians. All prayers go through God the Holy Spirit. All prayers are edited by God the Holy Spirit. And all true prayers are motivated by faith God the Holy Spirit gives us. When you hear the words, “The Lord look on you with favor,” during this blessing, think of God the Holy Spirit lifting up his face to you and accepting your prayers according to his will.
“…And give you peace.” The final phrase describing the work of the Holy Spirit. And although it is true that we can say we have peace through the Father’s promises and the Son’s blessings, we would not have any peace from those works if we didn’t believe in them. And since the Holy Spirit is the person of the Triune God that works faith in our hearts through the Word, he is the one through whom we have peace. In Romans Paul says that the kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Earlier in that same book he says “the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6). We cannot have true peace without the Holy Spirit because we cannot believe in the promises of God without him. Peace is the glorious end result of faith worked in our hearts by this third person of the Trinity.
This, then, is the blessing of the Lord. And I hope you have come to a greater appreciation of this blessing you hear almost every week. The words of this blessing are so rich in meaning and so comforting to any Christian on any given day that I would hope you will never miss out on the opportunity to soak them in again. I won’t close this sermon with the blessing. I want you to wait for it. Long for it. And rejoice in it as we again close our service and begin our week with this blessing - words of the Triune God, by the Triune God, and words the Triune God uses to place his very name on us every single week until he places his name on us forever in heaven.
Amen.

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” - 2 Cor. 13:14