A New Year's Prayer

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You know, we have thousands of ancient manuscripts of the Bible, more than any other ancient document. The manuscripts we have of the Bible date much closer to the date of the original documents when they written than any other ancient documents. So, don’t ever let anyone try to tell you, “We just can’t be sure, you know, if the Bible is really what God said and really what was said in the ancient past.” If you can’t trust the Scripture, you can’t trust a single ancient document because the evidence for it is much stronger.

But let me ask you this morning, what portion of Scripture do you think is written in the oldest document that contains a portion of Scripture that we possess? What portion of Scripture do you think occurs in the oldest document that we have? It might surprise you. In 1979, archeologists found two small rolled up pieces of silver in burial caves just outside the city of Jerusalem. They discovered that they are silver amulets. When dating was done on them by two different sources including the University of Southern California, these have been verified as dating to 600 years before Christ—before the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Now when the second of these silver scrolls was unrolled, and later translated, it revealed the priestly benediction from Numbers chapter 6, verses 24-26. So, we have evidence from 600 years before Christ that the Jews considered this a crucial passage and therefore doesn’t surprise us to know that it is still important to Jewish people today. It’s recited every Sabbath in the Jewish synagogues. And as Christians, we love this passage as well. When our girls were young and growing up at home, every night Sheila and I would sing this passage over 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.”

As we begin a New Year, I want us to look at this great blessing. I want us to understand this priestly prayer so that we can use its rich truths as a model and a pattern for our own prayers this year, both for ourselves, for our families, for our brothers and sisters in Christ here in the church and even as we will learn, even for those who don’t know the Lord. It’s a beautiful prayer and pattern. Let’s read it together, Numbers chapter 6, and I will begin reading in verse 22:

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 will then will bless them.”

The point of this brief passage is very clear and that is that God intends to bless His true people spiritually. Here, He requires spiritual leaders and, I can add, graciously invites us all to pray this blessing on ourselves and on others. So, how can this beautiful ancient prayer direct and shape our prayers now?

I want you to look with me at this passage because here in these verses there are three key instructions that will help us make this blessing our own in the year that lies before us—three key instructions that I want us to see that will help us to pray this prayer in the way that it ought to be prayed. 

The first key instruction is this: if you are going to really pray this prayer in a helpful way, you need to understand God’s heart in giving to us. You need to understand God’s heart and we see this in verses 22 and 23. First of all, He begins by making it clear that this is His plan. Notice verse 22, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying.” Now first of all, notice that first word, “then.” That word sets the context for this blessing. If you look down at chapter 7, verse 1, you will see that Moses picks up there with the day the Tabernacle was completed. When did that happen? All the way back in Exodus chapter 40. So, that means that this prayer comes at the end of a very long section beginning in Leviticus 1:1 and going all the way through Numbers 6, verse 21. This is a summary passage. This comes at the end of all of that revelation. And this passage is placed here to assure God’s people that if they will truly believe in Him and evidence that belief by obedience to Him, by keeping His laws, then God will bless them. God will bless them.

“Then.”

Now notice the verse continues, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying.” The subject and the verb here make it clear that this blessing wasn’t Moses’ idea, it wasn’t the Priests’ idea, it wasn’t the people’s idea, it’s God’s plan to bless His people. And that tells us so much about His heart for us. It reminds me of what Paul says in Romans 8:31. He says, “If God is for us, then who can be against us?” God is for us. To overwhelm us with all the blessings of this prayer. This is not humanly generated. This is God’s idea. Ronald Allen writes this, “The most impressive aspect of this prayer is that it is not something His people must beg for, but it is the outreaching of His grace.” If we are to understand God’s heart, we need to understand this is His blessing. This is His plan for His people.

But secondly, if we are going to understand His heart, we also need to need to see His prerequisites. You see, before God can bring His blessing on someone, there are conditions—there are prerequisites that must be met: verse 23 begins like this, “Speak to Aaron and his sons.” Now for us sitting here in the twenty-first century, that doesn’t necessarily fill us with all that’s really compacted in those brief words, so let me expand it a bit for you. When God is going to bless, first there must be an appointed mediator. There must be an appointed mediator. God commanded Moses to have Aaron and the priests pronounce this blessing. In fact, this becomes a permanent part of the job description of the priests in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy chapter 10, verse 8, “At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to serve Him” and listen to this “and to bless in His name until this day.” This is part of their job description. Why? Because the Old Testament priests were the appointed mediators between God and His people, appointed by God Himself. 

Now why were these priests put into position by God? What’s the point? Well, according to the book of Hebrews, God appointed priests in the Old Testament to teach one very powerful lesson: it is only through God’s appointed mediator that sinful people like us can have a relationship with God. In other words, you and I cannot in and of ourselves approach God. There has to be a mediator. Aaron and his sons were merely representative of that fact. They merely pointed forward to the Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, verse 5, There is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” That’s why there are no priests today. Jesus is our Great High Priest. He is the mediator to whom all of those Old Testament priests pointed: Aaron and his sons. 

But back to our text, the fact that the Old Testament priests were appointed to pronounce this blessing, reminds us of something crucial and that is spiritual blessing is only ours through the ultimate appointed mediator Jesus Christ. You understand that God cannot bless you—He cannot bless you—outside of that mediator. 

But that is only part of the prerequisite that God had for spiritual blessing. If He is going to bless you and me, first of all, there must be an appointed mediator, but secondly, there must be an accepted sacrifice. There must be an accepted sacrifice. You see, the priests pronounced this blessing in the Old Testament only after an animal sacrifice had been made. Take for example Leviticus chapter 9, verse 22, “Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them,” listen to this: “after making the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings.” “Moses and Aaron,” verse 23 says, “went into the tent of meeting”—the tabernacle at that point the point of recognition between God and His presence and His people—“and when they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.” Only through sacrifice. In fact, the first half of the book of Leviticus, the graveyard of many people’s good intentions to read through Bible, the first half of the book of Leviticus, is there to teach us one simple lesson, don’t miss the lesson of the first half of Leviticus, it’s this: you and I as sinful people can only approach a Holy God through sacrifice. That’s the point. When our sin has been atoned for by the death of an innocent substitute in our place.

At the tabernacle, and later when the temple was constructed it was only after the priests had offered the morning sacrifice every day—it was only after that morning sacrifice that he pronounced this blessing on the people. And on the Day of Atonement, it was only after the sacrifices had been made that the High Priest pronounced this blessing over God’s people. The point is that these spiritual blessings belong only to the one who sins have been atoned for by the death of the substitute and mediator that God appointed. 

If you are here this morning and you have never repented of your sins and believed in Jesus Christ, you need to understand this basic reality: God cannot, he will not, spiritually bless you apart from His Son Jesus Christ. He is the mediator He has appointed. And it’s only through His accepted sacrifice that you, a sinful person like I am, can approach a Holy God. That’s God’s prerequisite. You want His blessing, you want the blessing of your Creator in your life, it will not happen apart from the mediator, and it will not happen until you repent of your sins and ask that God to apply the death of His Son, the sacrifice of His Son, to your life so that He can forgive you. Those are the prerequisites for blessing. The prerequisites for God’s blessing on your life are that you know the mediator and that you have repented of your sins and trusted in His once for all sacrifice for sins. 

Thirdly, we see God’s heart, not only in His plans and in the prerequisites that He establishes but in His prescription here. Notice, he says in verse 23, “Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them.” God prescribed that these exact words would be spoken. And so, it is not a surprise that from that day forward you see this happening again and again and again. Daily, the priests pronounced this blessing after the morning sacrifice and they did it from the time the tabernacle was built back in Moses’ time, with a couple of interruptions, but until the temple was destroyed in AD 70. Every day after the morning sacrifice, these words were pronounced over the people of Israel. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priests pronounced this blessing.

It's also interesting that it happened in the ancient times, after the temple was unavailable, at every synagogue service. On the Sabbath after every synagogue service, this blessing was pronounced. Do you know what that means? That means that it is very likely that Jesus pronounced this blessing many times after He taught in the synagogues. He taught almost every Sabbath in the synagogue and it’s likely that He ended the service with these words. He certainly was in services where they were pronounced. 

Today, Jewish people still use this blessing every Sabbath. And throughout church history, Christians have recited this passage, written it, prayed this blessing. Why? Why all the attention on this short blessing in these three verses? Because it reflects the heart of God for His true people. You need to understand God’s heart if you are going to really make use of this passage.

But there is a second key instruction for us in this passage, and that is, to pray for God’s blessing. To pray for God’s blessing and this really is the heart of this passage, verses 24-26. Ronald Allen refers to this prayer as the Lord’s Prayer of the Old Testament. But before we look at these beautiful words and what it means, we first need to make sure that we don’t misunderstand what it means. So, let me make sure that you get this. This blessing was not for every Israelite nor for every person living today. In other words, this isn’t comprehensively true. How do I know that? Well, read Leviticus 26 and read Deuteronomy 27 and 28 and there you will discover that God chose to bless the entire nation with temporal blessings when the majority of them truly believed in Him and obeyed Him. But individuals who proved their lack of trust in God, their lack of belief in Him through their disobedience, those individuals were not under this blessing, they were under God’s curse. That’s clear in those passages. 

So, understand this, although God is good to His enemies, in fact, Paul tells us He’s good to lead sinners to repentance. Although God is good His enemies, they are under His curse now and they will experience His eternal curse and wrath forever. 

Secondly, this blessing does not deny that God chastens His children for their disobedience. That happens with true believers in the Old Testament and the New Testament as well.

Number three, this blessing is not a universal promise of earthly prosperity for God’s people. That’s what the prosperity gospel teaches. You know, if you will just trust in Jesus, you’ll be wealthy, and you won’t get sick, and He wants you well and you’ll enjoy your best life now. That’s a lie. That’s evident throughout Scripture. Look at the lives of Jesus, of Paul, of the Jerusalem believers who needed the benevolence from other churches across the Mediterranean world. The Macedonian believers whom Paul said in the Corinthian epistles, lived in poverty, and yet were spiritually rich. So, it’s not that.

Number four, this blessing is not primarily about physical blessings, but spiritual ones: God’s protection, His grace and His peace.

And finally, this blessing is not a guarantee of a life without trials. Think about it: Job was the most righteous man on the planet and look at what he faced. Abraham faced a life of trials. Joseph. Who wants the first half of Joseph’s life? Any volunteers? David. And, of course, Moses himself. Look at what Moses faced. So, don’t mistake this blessing as any of those things. It’s not about those things. 

So, having just cleared the deck a little bit, let’s consider now what this prayer really means. First of all, I want you to notice verses 24-26, its structure. Notice it is set apart in our Bibles as a poem. It is a poem. It has three couplets that follow the same pattern. Each of them begins, you will notice, with the Lord’s personal name. And then in each case, God’s name is followed by a description or a picture of His blessing: verse 24, “bless you”; verse 25, “make His face shine on you”; verse 26, “lift up His countenance on you.” Those are pictures of God’s blessing: descriptions. 

And then, each couplet ends with a specific prayer or request for a specific spiritual blessing: verse 24, “may He keep you”; verse 25, “may He be gracious to you”; and verse 26, “may He give you peace.”

Now let’s consider then what this blessing means. First of all, we learn the only source of the blessing: and that source is the Lord. His name is repeated three times the beginning of each of these three verses. It is not surprising. You go back to verse 22, it’s God who initiated this blessing; verse 23, it’s God who commanded this blessing. So, it is not surprising that He alone can accomplish it. The repetition of God’s name underscores that He alone is the source of these blessings. Aaron and the priests speak the blessing, but they don’t bless. God blesses.

Now, notice in our English Bibles the word “Lord” is in caps, small caps. As I have explained to you before when that occurs in the Old Testament, almost seven thousand times, it tells us that in Hebrew the word is “Yahweh.” It’s God’s personal name. Means “He is. When He says it, “I Am.” When we say it, “He is.” Yahweh. It means “God simply is.” He depends on nothing and no one outside of Himself. He is self-existent. 

This is the One True and Living God. The God of the Bible. And here we are told that that God alone is the source of every spiritual blessing. I love the way Paul says it in Ephesians 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.” Where? “In Christ.” Every spiritual blessing comes from this God. 

Now, you will notice that God’s personal name is repeated here three times for no grammatical reason. There are several places in the Old Testament where the New Testament clear doctrine of the Trinity is implied in the Old Testament, but not explicitly taught and this is one of them. So, although this passage is not explicitly teaching that there is one God eternally existing in three persons, in light of what is taught in the New Testament that that’s a reality, and in light of what our Lord taught us, we can see the reality of the Trinity in these verses. That God, the God who is Yahweh, the God who eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That God is the source and He alone of every spiritual blessing. 

As we continue to examine the blessing, notice secondly, the three descriptions of God’s blessing. The three descriptions. First of all, verse 24, “The Lord bless you.” This is a general summary of everything else in this prayer. To say, “May the Lord bless you” is to say, “May the Lord do good to you.” “May the Lord do good to you.” John Calvin puts it this way, “The blessing of God is the goodness of God in action by which a supply of all good pours down to us from His good favor as from their only fountain.” 

And as I already noted, this passage is talking primarily about spiritual blessing. God’s goodness shown in His spiritual blessing in the words “keep,” “grace,” and “peace.” There is only way that God can bring spiritual blessing like that to fallen sinful human beings and it’s through the work of His Son and the gospel. In fact, that was what was promised. All the way back to Genesis chapter 12, you remember, God makes the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12. And He ends the Abrahamic Covenant by saying this: “In you, [your seed] all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” What did He mean? He meant they would be spiritually blessed, and they will be blessed through one of your seed, through one person who’s coming. Paul makes that clear in Galatians chapter 3, verse 8, He says, 

The Scriptures, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, “all the nations will be blessed in you.”

In other words, He was promising the gospel; He was promising that a person would come who would bring spiritual blessing. A descendant of Abraham. So, understand this: in the Old Testament, true believers like Abraham, only experienced God’s spiritual blessing in anticipation of the Redeemer who would come one day and reconcile them to God. That’s why Jesus said in John 8, verse 56, He said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day. He saw it and was glad.” Abraham got it. One of his seed was coming who would bring spiritual blessing.

As Old Testament believers waited for the coming of the Messiah, God gave His blessing under the Old Testament law, listen carefully: He gave His blessing not based on their earning that blessing, but He gave it to those who demonstrated true saving faith in God through their obedience to God. In other words, it is no different than the New Testament. We come to trust in God, to be justified by faith as Abraham was in Genesis 15, “He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And then we demonstrate our faith by our obedience after having believed. Same way Old and New. No difference. 

Now that God has sent His Son into the world, now that spiritual blessing is available, listen carefully, only through repentance and faith in the One who came, Jesus Christ. Turn over to Acts chapter 3. Peter makes this so clear in his sermon here to the leaders and to the people of Israel. After he had healed the lame beggar, he preaches this sermon. I wish I had time to walk through it. But verse 17, he said, “Now, brethren, I know you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did” when you killed the Messiah. But verse 18, it was prophesied that the Messiah would suffer. Verse 19, “Therefore, repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away.” He goes, verse 20, to remind them that God said He would send this person, this prophet, that is, Jesus. And He said to give heed to everything He says to you. Now watch verse 23, “It will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet” in other words, every individual who doesn’t obey Jesus “shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.” Do you know what He saying? He is saying if you refuse to believe in your Messiah, you are under the curse of God just like those curses in the Old Testament.

And then He says “it is predicted. It is prophesied,” verse 25, and Abraham was told, “in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Therefore, verse 26, “For you first, [the Jewish people] God raised up His Servant and sent Him” notice this “to bless you.” How? “By turning every one of you from your wicked ways.” Jesus was the blessing in a Person. He was the spiritual blessing in a person and it’s only in and through Him that we can be spiritually blessed. Understand this: Jesus Christ is the touchstone. If you reject Him, you are under God’s curse. If you accept Him, you will receive a blessing.

That’s why Paul ends his letter to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verse 22, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus, he is to be accursed.” Let him be damned. He is under the curse of God for rejecting God’s Son whom He sent. When we pray “the Lord bless you,” we are asking God to show that person His spiritual favor and that starts with the salvation that His Son Jesus purchased in His life, death and resurrection. 

There is a second description of the Lord’s blessing, verse 25, “The Lord make His face to shine on you.” The Lord make His face shine on you. God is a Spirit, of course, and He doesn’t have a body like ours, so when Scripture refers to God’s shining face, it is describing His loving presence. Biblically, when God is angry, He hides His face. But when He causes His face to shine on people, just as the sun shines on the earth, it’s to do them good. 

Let me show this. Turn back to Psalm 80. Three times the psalmist uses this expression like this. Psalm 80. The context here is the people who lived in the southern kingdom wrote this Psalm in response to the destruction of the northern ten tribes in 722, and they were carried off into captivity by Assyria. This was their prayer, verse 3: “O God, restore us and cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.”

Look down in verse 7, “O God of hosts, restore us and cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.” He repeats it in verse 19, “O lord God of hosts, restore us; cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.” In other words, when God causes His face to shine like the sun, it is to do us good. 

In Psalm 31:16, the psalmist says, “Make Your face to shine upon Your servant. Save me in Your [steadfast love].” Here’s another expression, Psalm 119:135, “Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes.” You see, when God makes His face to shine upon us, it is to do us good. That’s the picture of this blessing.

There is a third picture, in verse 26, “The Lord lift up His countenance on you.” This is the only time this exact expression occurs of God but there are similar expressions, for example, Psalm 4, verse 6, “Many are saying, ‘Who will show us any good?’ Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O Lord!” What does that mean: “Lift up Your countenance upon us”? Well, we get a hint about what that means by the negative side. In Genesis chapter 4, verse 6, God says to Cain, “Your countenance has fallen.” What does He mean? Your face has fallen; your frowning; your displeased. So, when you lift up your countenance it means “to smile.” So, to pray, “May God lift up His countenance on you” means this: “may God turn His face to you in pleasure and affection.” We could even say, “May God smile upon you as His own Son or His own daughter.” 

May He lift up His countenance upon you. It is a beautiful picture. 

And those three descriptions are pictures; they are pictures to remind us that at its heart, this prayer asks God to bless individuals—to bless individuals in some cases by initiating a relationship with Him as Savior and in other cases by continuing a relationship with them as Father. 

But Christian, I want you to get something. Look at those pictures again. This is how God wants you to think about Him. These three descriptions, these three pictures, they are how God is disposed towards you. He will bless you. He is going to do you good. I love the way H. B. Charles says it, “Trust is really reverse paranoia. He is out to do me good.” He’s out to do me good. That’s God! He will bless you! That’s His heart toward you. He’s out to do you good. Our lives, Christians, are marked by His loving presence. He makes His face shine upon us. And He smiles upon us with tender affection as His children. He lifts up His countenance. 

Finally, in this prayer, we are told the specific requests beyond those pictures of blessing that we are to seek. There are three requests, or we could say, three expressions of God’s blessing here in verses 24 and 26. The first expression of His blessing that we are pray for, is His protection and preservation—His protection and preservation. Notice verse 24: may “The Lord keep you.” The Hebrew word for “keep” includes both protecting like a guard as well as, preserving. So, we are asking God “to protect” and “preserve” the one He has brought into a relationship with Himself.

And that is in keeping with His purpose because that is God’s will to do so. He protects and preserves His people. I love one image in Psalm 17, verse 8, it says, “Keep me as the apple of [Your] eye.” If you ever wonder what that means: the apple in Hebrew is the idea of the pupil. “Protect me as if I were the pupil of Your eye, God.” Think about that as human beings. We protect ourselves in various ways, but if something is headed toward an eye, what do we do? We move heaven and earth to avoid it. We might hurt ourselves in the process, but we don’t want anything getting into the eye, because we understand its importance. The psalmist says, “God protect me just like someone is trying to poke a finger in Your eye.” Defend me; protect me; preserve me.

Psalm 121 talks about that reality. Psalm 121 describes God’s protection particularly on the pilgrimage, look at Psalm 121 for a moment. On the pilgrimage to the feast but the last two verses take the protection in this Psalm beyond the trip to Jerusalem for the feast. Look at verse 7 and 8 of Psalm 121: “The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.” Preserve and protect, O God. 

In the New Testament it is the same. Christ prayed that God would protect us. John 17:11: He said, “I am no longer in the world; . . . I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name.” And here’s the good news: God will. He will preserve every believer until the day Christ receives us to Himself. First Peter 1:5 says, we “are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Not a single true believer will be lost. But here is the shocking part: God does keep His people, but what we are taught here, is He often does that in answer to our prayers. 

There is a second expression of God’s blessing that we should pray for and that is His grace, verse 25, “May the Lord be gracious to you.” The Hebrew word “gracious” is a familiar one. It describes getting what you don’t deserve and not just what you don’t deserve but the opposite of what you deserve. That’s the picture in this word. God is gracious when He does good to a person who deserves exactly the opposite, and guess what? If God does good to any of us, that’s how He does it. Because none of us deserves good from God. We deserve His judgment. And God extends His grace based solely on His own sovereign choice. That’s what He says, Exodus 33:19, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.” Paul quotes that in Romans 9, and Paul draws this conclusion, Romans 9:16, “So then it” that is, election and ultimately salvation “does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs,” not on human will or human effort “but on God who has mercy.” Grace is a sovereign prerogative of God. But here’s the amazing reality, listen carefully, don’t miss this: God invites us here to pray that He will be gracious to us and to others. It’s His sovereign prerogative, but He says, “Pray. Pray that I will be gracious.” That He will give grace for salvation; grace for sanctification; grace for the needs of this life; grace for serving in the church; grace for everything in life. That’s what we need grace for. I love the way Paul puts it, and this is a comprehensive statement, in 1 Corinthians 15:10, he says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” Everything good in me, it’s grace.

A final expression of God’s blessing that we should pray for is His peace, verse 26, may “The Lord give you peace.” I won’t belabor this but let me just make it clear to you that there are three kinds of peace that God promises believers. First of all, there is peace with God. This is objective, external peace, the cessation of hostilities, conflict between us and God. We are His enemies; He is our enemy. The Scripture is clear about that until we come to Christ in repentance and faith. And peace with God is only possible through Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The war only ends between you and God when you believe in His Son. It goes on in Ephesians 2 to say that Jesus is our peace, that He reconciled us to God and to others, so we have peace with God. 

Secondly, as believers, we have peace of heart. This is taught in a number of places, but I love 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verse 16: “Now, may the Lord of peace Himself continually grant you peace in every circumstance. The Lord be with you all!” Peace of heart.

But there is a third kind of peace that we are promised and that is comprehensive well-being. And I think this is the idea in Numbers 6. You see, the Hebrew word for “peace” is shalom. And it’s not solely the cessation of conflict. Shalom in Hebrew is “fullness of life.” It is a life marked by complete and comprehensive wholeness in every category of life. It’s life lived like the Creator intended it to be lived. Believer, that is what you ought to be praying for you and others. Give us that wholeness in every area of life.

So, we should pray for His protection and preservation, His grace, and His peace. So, we considered two instructions to help us make this blessing our own. We have to understand God’s heart if we are going to use it. We have to really understand the introduction of this prayer. We have to pray for God’s blessing. We actually have to pray what’s in this prayer. But there’s one final instruction: we must trust God’s promises. We must trust God’s promises. Look at verse 27, it says, “So they shall invoke.” Literally, in Hebrew: “so they shall put My name on the sons of Israel and I will bless them.” In Hebrew, “I” is emphatic. “I will bless them.” Because God has entered into a relationship with us because He saved us through His Son; because He’s adopted us as His children. He will bless us. Christian, let that sink into your head. This prayer is God’s intention for you. He will bless you! He will do you good! He’s out to do you good. He will cause His face to shine upon you. He will lift up His countenance on you. God smiles on you as His child. And He will keep you; He will preserve and protect you; He will be gracious to you; He will overwhelm you with grace; and He will give you shalom. He will give you wholeness. It has begun already and someday when we are like Jesus it will be complete. 

You can be assured of it. God says, “It will happen.” And why shouldn’t it? You remember Paul says in Romans 8:32, “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” everything else. What an amazing prayer. 

So, what does this blessing teach us as twenty-first century believers? Real quickly, let me just give you a list. Here are the enduring lessons from this prayer. Think about this; meditate on this. Here are the enduring lessons. Number one, it reflects God’s eternal character: He is good, and it explains His eternal purpose for His people, and that is, to do us good. 

Number two, it anticipates Christ’s salvation of His people. We read it in Acts 3: “God raised up His servant and sent Him to bless you by turning you from your wicked ways. Number three, it reminds us of Christ’s continuing intercession. Why do I say that? You know what the last thing Jesus did before He ascended into Heaven was? Listen to Luke 24:50: 

He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.

In other words, like our Great High Priest, He was pronouncing probably almost certainly this blessing on His people as He ascended into heaven. And guess what? He is still praying this for you, Christian. This is still His intercession. 

Number four, it provides a pattern for our prayers. It is a great prayer. It really is a prayer that fits the salvation of the lost and God’s care and provision for believers.

Number five, it foresees the Christian blessing. You see, in the New Testament, Paul adapts this priestly blessing as His prayer for believers in the New Testament era. Second Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14, here’s the Triune God, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”

Number six, it reminds us of our evangelistic duty. In Psalm 67, verse 1 and 2, these words are repeated, “God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us,” but listen to this, in order “that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.” In other words, God blesses spiritually not just for ourselves, but so that He, the God in whom we believe might be known. There is no better way to begin the New Year than to make this prayer your own, for today and for the year ahead. Let’s pray together.

Our Father, thank you for the richness of Your Word. Embed these truths into our hearts. Lord, those who don’t know You may they come to know You through the one mediator and the one accepted sacrifice Your Son. 

And Father, for the rest of us, may the words of this prayer be the prayer of our hearts. “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.” Lord, that is our prayer in and through Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.