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by Precarious Yates
Narrated by Artificial Intelligence, Jenny,
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Tucked in the book of Numbers, toward the end of chapter 6, God tells Moses the blessing He wants the priests to speak over the people:
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them:
“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.”’
“So they shall put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”
Jesus, our Great High Priest, put His name and the name of His Father on us by declaring that we are part of His family. Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called children of God (1 John 3:1, emphasis mine). When Jesus walked on the earth, He declared the Father’s name to us, and the Holy Spirit continues to declare it: “That the love with which You loved me may be in them and I in them” (John 17:26). God wants to give us the ability to love with His love and to declare to the world what He has declared to us: His name and His blessing.
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. He is the one who gives us exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or even imagine through Christ Jesus. God shows us in Isaiah 25 a glimpse of what it will be like:
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
There is a banquet awaiting us that we can’t even imagine, a banquet filled with the fellowship that our hearts desire so completely that we’re constantly homesick for it: fellowship with God and unhindered fellowship with one another.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
That shroud over us all is shame, and the sin that causes shame. God, through Christ Jesus destroys that. That sheet that covers all nations is death, and the sin that causes death. God the Father destroys that through the work of the cross.
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.
The words of the priestly prayer are a foretaste of all of this.
May the Lord bless you:
This is the great desire of the Lord’s heart: to speak blessing over you; to declare who you’re intended to be, who He made you to be; He who causes the sun to shine and rains to fall on the righteous and unrighteous also speaks blessing over you—He has so many good thoughts about you and life-giving words to say to you. He doesn’t just bless us with material goods, He blesses us to be able to love, to know we’re received as beloved children, to know that we are washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, and we’re invited to eternal fellowship with Him and with others.
The Lord bless you and keep you:
This is more than just having a possession. The word “keep” means to guard over. God is your rear guard. He is a wall of fire around us and a pillar of fire within us. He is with us through the valley of the shadow of death with His rod and His staff as comfort to us.
Make His face shine upon you.
The word for ‘face’ is panim which is a plural. God makes His faces to shine upon us. All the expressions of love and care are turned toward us because of what Christ did for us.
God will cause His shekinah, the manifest glory of God, to shine on you. When people encountered the shekinah glory of God, they fell on their faces. He wants this shekinah glory to shine on us and also through us.
The Lord be gracious to you:
God’s grace is so profound—it’s part of His name. “The Lord, the Lord Gracious and Compassionate…” Grace has the element of mercy. It’s also the empowerment to do what we’ve been asked to do. Through Jesus, we have access to grace upon grace. He is merciful to us, so very kind to us, and gives us what we need for all godliness. He wants us to enter into that grace and abide there. He made a way for that to be possible through Jesus.
The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you:
This is almost like the line before it, because the Hebrew for ‘countenance’ is panim, faces! One way this line of the blessing can be understood is to imagine when a parent of an infant tries to get the baby to smile. That is the way God causes the light of His face to be lifted up upon us.
This is something we should be reminding people around us regularly. This is how much God loves you! God wants to transform us with His love.
This blessing is not only something we can speak over one another, we can also speak it over ourselves.
The last line of the priestly blessing is:
“and give you peace,”
Through Christ, we have peace with Him. We can have peace with one another. He gives us peace so that we can be peacemakers wherever we go.
In Matthew 5:9 Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.” He gives us peace so that we can give it away everywhere we go. “Peace I leave you, My peace I give to you …”
We can find echoes of this priestly blessing throughout scripture, because that is what God wants us to remember. He wants us to receive blessings so we are in the habit of giving them. He wants us to know how much He guards us because He wants us to guard one another. He wants us to know show faces of kindness and favor, so He does this first. The Lord’s very name—His reputation—is gracious, and He wants us to live in that grace and to extend it to others. The Lord wants to fill us with His light, His joy, and His peace. This is for us, and for us to share.
There was a song with the words of the priestly blessing that came out during the pandemic that has a chorus which says, “may His blessing be upon you and a thousand generations, and your family, and your children, and their children, and their children.”
This is what our today and our future look like because of Jesus.
May the Lord bless you and keep you …
Precarious Yates
About the Author:
Precarious Yates has lived in 8 different states of the Union and 3 different countries, but currently lives in Texas with her husband, her daughter and their big dogs. When she’s not writing, she enjoys music, teaching, playing on jungle gyms, praying and reading. She holds a Masters in the art of making tea and coffee and a PhD in Slinky® disentangling.
Links:
The Captives
The captives will only be free when Shunda loses his fears about who he is. Yet what Shunda fears more than anything is loneliness.
Qoshonni figures she has become too violent and will never come back from the brink that the MerKing has pushed her to.
Mookori knows his father loves him best, but this has no consolation as war invades the shores of his father’s kingdom.
The Heart of the Caveat Whale is an epic trilogy that takes place both under water and on land. Book 1, The Captives, in the beginning of a journey into joy and terror. Sea monsters abound, as does the valor of both simple folk and nobles alike.
