Gods Name on You

Numbers 6:22-27 The LORD said to Moses, Tell Aaron and his sons, `This is how you are to bless the Israelites. 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 turn his face toward you and give you peace. So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them. You have heard these words hundreds if not thousands of times, most often in the context of the end of the worship service. Many of you look forward to hearing those words so you can go eat lunch or get home in time for the kickoff. And well get there eventually. But Id like to spend some time with you this morning going over the significance of this blessing, hopefully strengthening the impact these words have on you each time you hear them. A phrase that catches my attention when I study this passage is So they will put my name on the Israelites. That is something we normally associate with baptism. Gods name is put on you when you are baptized, and each week we begin our service with a reminder of those words, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But according to this passage, the blessing that Aaron and his sons are to speak is another way of putting Gods name on you. So each week we begin and end our worship putting Gods name on those assembled. It is a reminder of who you are. Lets think about that name. When you think about God, you usually think of Him as God, or you may think in terms of Father, Son and Spirit. In the Old Testament, He told Moses He had a name, I AM, a name that is usually translated in English as LORD, using all capital letters, as it appears in todays text. That name that was to be kept holy. The Jews revered that name so highly that they were afraid to say it aloud, lest they speak it carelessly and break the commandment that forbids speaking His name in vain. That attitude is vastly different from people today who rattle off Oh my God! time after time without ever thinkning about what they just said. However, the Jewis people took Gods name very seriously. In fact, there is an interesting story about how a word came into existence because the Jews so highly regarded Gods name. Bear with me now as I take you through a little Hebrew lesson. In Hebrew, only the consonants were written. People had to figure out what vowel sounds belonged. That would be like writing CT in English. Does that stand for cat, cut, cot, coat, cute? It would be hard to figure out. Hebrew speaking people evidently understood it, but it was difficult for anyone else. Eventually, starting around the year 600, some guys called Masoretes decided to help everyone out by adding vowels to the Hebrew text. In order to not change what the words looked like, they added the vowels by putting dots and dashes above and below the words. The name for God was YAHWEH. [use diagrams to show what it would look like pointed correctly- long and short a]. So as not to say Gods name without thinking about it, whenever the Masoretes came to Gods name, they used the vowels from a different word, the word ADONAY, which means lord or master. [use diagram to show what it looks like] When you take the 1

consonants from Gods Hebrew name and substitute these vowel sounds, you come up with YEHOWAH or Jehovah, the English rendering of Gods Hebrew name. In this text, Gods name, LORD, YAHWEH, or JEHOVAH, whichever you prefer, is mentioned three times. A three-fold reference in Hebrew was a common way of emphasizing your point. But I am convinced it was no accident that God referred to Himself three times. I believe He was giving man a glimpse of how He would reveal Himself to be Triune, three persons, one God, Father, Son and Spirit. In each instance Gods name is used here, there is a pair of blessings attached to it, which grow more intense as the list goes on. Lets look at those words God Himself told us to use to confer His blessings. The LORD bless you: Gods Name is who He is. Since God is the only source of blessing, His Name placed upon you is an indication of blessing. The concept of bless has to do with giving you something good. A good and full life comes from the loving and faithful nature of our God, and there is no blessing apart from being in a relationship with the one true God. God is the one who gives life. and keep you: The word used for keep means watch over or exercise great care. The LORD, who is the source of all life, will also preserve and take care of that life. His watchful and vigilant eye is on you. He is looking out for you and your best interests. the LORD make his face shine upon you: A literal translation of make his face shine upon you could be The Lords face light you up! A shining face was a way of speaking about favor and good will. Divine protection is ours because God does not frown upon us, but lets His light shine. God was recognized as being the source of all light throughout the Old Testament, as in this passage from Isaiah: The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the LORD will be your everlasting light. (Isaiah 60:19) and be gracious to you: Gods grace is His choosing to be kind to people who dont deserve it. Gods grace led Him to allow Adam and Eve to live outside the Garden even though they were deserving of death. Gods grace spared Cain after he had killed his brother. Gods grace picked sinful Noah as the instrument to preserve His creation. His grace chose sinful Abraham to be the father of the chosen people. His grace chose sinful Paul, changing him from a persecutor of Christians to a preacher of the Good News. His grace to YOU and led you to faith and gives you what Jesus earned for you so that you will not have to be punished eternally for you sins. His grace includes all other good things He gives, but it is primarily that He chooses undeserving sinners to be His people. the LORD turn his face toward you: This part of the verse has been translated a number of different ways. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you or The LORD look upon you with favor. It is very similar to the previous verse. Countenance and face are synonyms, and the Hebrew word is the same in both verses. The most literal translation here would be The LORD lift up His face to you. This would be the opposite of turning His face away from you and rejecting you. 2

Instead, the LORD accepts you, He looks upon you with favor. Another way to think of this is that God is smiling on you. and give you peace: God puts His peace on you. The word for peace is SHALOM, which does not mean peace as in the absence of war, but inner peace. It is speaking of the tranquillity that comes from being in a proper relationship with God, the one who places His name upon you. So far, we have looked at this benediction for the most part in its original context, to people of the Old Testament. Id like to go through it again, this time thinking about the significance of these pairs of blessings knowing what we do about Jesus Christ. The LORD bless you and keep you; bless reminds us that God is the source of a good life. The people of the Old Testament understood this. But we have even more reason to appreciate this, since we have seen and heard how God gives new life through Jesus Christ. And he keeps or watches over us as a loving Father cares for His children. Our faith assures us we are in His care and keeping. the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; Gods face has shined on us in the person of Christ. That message fills the New Testament. God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all.(1 John 1:5) He has sent His light to shine out of the darkness. (John 1:5) The light of Christ has dawned upon us, and we live in that light. And God has been gracious to you. God graciously chose you to be His children even though you dont deserve it. His grace reached out and chose you to believe in Jesus and be saved. His kindness is evident all around you in such things as Spouse and family, food and drink, home and possessions, work and recreation. But His kindness and favor has been shown to you most clearly in Jesus Christ. For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor. 4:6) the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace. We know that we are accepted by God because of our faith in the one He sent to save us, Jesus Christ. And because of what Jesus did for all men with His death to pay for sin and His rising again to defeat death, we have exactly what the angels proclaimed at His birth: PEACE ON EARTH, peace between God and men. All of these good things come as a result of Gods name being placed on you, because you are in a relationship with Him. As I said earlier, that started with His placing His name on you in your Baptism; we begin and end our worship with reminders of His name being on you. May you take to heart the tremendous blessing you have each time you hear these words, each time His name is put on you.