The Blessing of the LORD

Intro: What is a Benediction?

Benediction is a blessing over God’s people as their worship service concludes. Our worship is dialogical, which means worship intimately involves God speaking to us, and our response to God.

Benedictions are important for the Believer because it is God’s bestowing a blessing on His people at the conclusion of their worship of Him.

God often uses the preaching of the Word to convict us of sin still present in our life. So then benedictions service as a reminder that God does not leave us on a bad note as it were.

The LORD bless you and keep you

The Biblical view of blessing is much different than the idea of blessing in our day.

In Scripture, blessing is, broadly speaking, calling down divine favor upon someone. Cursing then is calling down divine wrath or displeasure upon someone.

Today in our western society, blessing someone is really just a wishing them well. It is a way of saying that you desire good things for them. Cursing follows suit as a wishing harm or at least bad/unpleasant things for them. But there is not tangible substance to blessing or cursing.

Now, in a more narrow sense, Biblical blessing often goes hand in hand with salvation. So for God to bless someone means He is reckoning them as part of His covenant people. [Can use Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob for examples].

So when the LORD commands the priests to speak to Israel saying “The LORD bless you...” He confirms their standing as his covenant people.

Blessing can be either temporal or spiritual. For Abraham, the blessing he received was both of these. But we know that God does not promise wealth to all His people. So blessing here should be understood as spiritual blessing. This makes more sense as we consider the second half of this verse.

“The LORD… keep you”

The Hebrew word here is shamar. If you remember, this word was used in Genesis 2 when Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden. We have said in the past, that shamar in Genesis 2 is best translated as “guard”. This is the same sense found in our text.

The LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you

The language of facing someone in Scripture refers to being in their presence. This is especially true of God. Think of the 1st Commandment in Exodus 20. God commands us to “have no other gods before me”. Literally it reads “have no other gods before my face”.

“The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you”. Moses shining face.

So God here promises to make his face shine, or to have us in His presence and to be gracious to us. Now the only way we can

The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace

This verse is a petition for God’s kind favor that leads to peace.