The Father’s Extravagant Blessing

Numbers 6:24-26

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
December 31, 2023
Harriett Meeker

Across the years I’ve enjoyed hearing and reading the benediction of various ministers. Here are three of my favorites:

John Claypool, former pastor of Broadway Church, Fort Worth, and a strong advocate for grief recovery following the death of his 9-year-old daughter. Rev. Claypool ended every worship service with this message:

Depart now
In The Fellowship of God, The Father,
And as You Go, Remember:
In The Goodness of God
You were Born into This World;
By The Grace of God
You have Been Kept
All the Day Long,
Even Until This Hour;
By The Love of God,
Fully Revealed in the Face of Jesus,
You, are Being...Redeemed
Amen

The Rev. Sheila Schuller, daughter of legendary pastor Bob Schuller, assumed the pulpit at the Crystal Cathedral at Garden Grove, California. She ended each service the same way that her father ended each service during his fifty years of ministry:

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. And may God give you His peace in your going out and in your coming in, in your lying down and in your rising up, in your labor and in your leisure, in your laughter and in your tears... Until you come to stand before Jesus in that day in which there is no sunset and no dawning. Amen.

The following benediction from Garrett Vickrey, pastor of Woodland Church, San Antonio:

And now, as you are going, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May God give you grace to never sell yourself short, the grace to risk something big for something good, the grace, the grace to remember that the world is too small for anything but truth, and too dangerous for anything but love. So may God take your minds and think through them, may God take your lips and speak through them and may God take your hearts and set them on fire. Amen.

And now the most recognized benediction in the Bible:

“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.”
Numbers 6:24-26

The people of Israel had been camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai for almost a year after leaving Egypt. They had received God’s 10 commandments and his full law and built the tabernacle according to God’s precise instructions.

Now, on the cusp of moving toward the promised land and going into battle, God commanded the high priest Aaron to pronounce this blessing over the people. Because we hear these words recited so often, we can lose the awe that God would bless so extravagantly. Consider these five truths in God’s blessing over you.

1.God is the source of all blessing. Although often referred to as the priestly or Aaronic blessing, these words weren’t written by men. They are God’s words spoken through his priests to his people. God is a God who blesses. In fact, when God created Adam and Eve, the first thing He did was to bless them. {Gen 1:28} And the last thing Jesus did? He blessed his apostles. As Jesus was taken into heaven, he was blessing his apostles. {Luke 24:50-51}

While these words are often spoken as a prayer or petition, there is no “will you” or “may you” found here. God has proclaimed this blessing and has commanded that it be spoken over His people.

2. God blesses us personally. Six times, these verses repeat “you” and each time it is in the singular form. Rather than blessing Israel corporately in these verses, God of the universe blesses each one personally. In a crowd of more than 2 million, God saw each one. God sees you. God knows you intimately, cares for you individually and blesses you personally.

3. God bends down to benefit us. The Hebrew word for bless means to kneel down. Used metaphorically here, it shows that God bends down to give us Himself and with that, all of His benefits – His faithfulness, mercy, forgiveness, grace, love, comfort, joy, hope, guidance, redemption, adoption, acceptance and more. Ephesians 1:3 tells us we have every spiritual blessing through Jesus. Because God is infinite, we can never reach the end of His blessing.

4. God blesses as a father to his child. How can God lift His countenance upon us if He is in heaven and we are on earth? Doesn’t he look down upon us? These words are a picture of a father lifting his child in his arms above him. Just as that father lifts up his beaming face to that child, God shines His full pleasure, His full goodwill, and His full joy over you as His child.

5. God’s blessing brings peace. Who doesn’t want peace? But God’s peace is more than the absence of strife. The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, stems from the word which means restoration back to the original state. God’s peace means not just harmony, but completeness and wholeness, rest and welfare, soundness and safety.

Take heart today, my friends. In a world that is often hard and chaotic, God has bent down to bless you personally. God of infinite benefits gives them to you. And though the world may frown, God’s beaming countenance is upon you. Today and throughout 2024, child of God, walk in the fullness of Your Father’s extravagant blessing. We are people of hope, people of promise, people of destiny.