Benediction
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Tonight's scripture reading is from the book of Numbers.

Chapter 6, verses 22 through 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 to 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.

This is God's Word. We're in a series of sermons on what we do when we gather for worship. And each week we're looking at a different thing that we do in order to become more meaningful, able to participate more meaningfully and actively when we gather. And tonight we're going to look at the benediction. A whole sermon on the benediction. What is a benediction? You know, in the way British court sessions end is somebody says, be upstanding and everybody gets up.

The way parliamentary sessions end is somebody says, move we adjourn, second, all in favor say aye. Is that what a benediction is like that? A kind of little perfunctory ceremony that helps everybody know it's time to, you know, find your purse and get ready to go? No. I'd like to show you tonight that the benediction is the meaning of your whole life. And if you understood the benediction, when it's said to you, your whole life should flash before your eyes. A benediction is a blessing.

And what we're going to do is look at what that blessing is, what God's blessing is, how it comes, and how it reshapes your life. What the blessing is, how it comes, and how it reshapes your life. So first, this is very famous, this passage. This is called the Aaronic, not the ironic, but the Aaronic blessing, the blessing of Aaron. And this was said at the end of every tabernacle service, when the...

Worship service of Israel was all over at the tabernacle. That was the benediction. That's how the service ended. Let's look at it. First of all, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Now, what is blessing? What are we talking about? When God created the world, six times in chapter 1, after he created light and animals, it says, and he saw that it was good. And he saw that it was good.

And he saw that it was good. Now the word benediction is the Latin for good word. The word good. Bene means good. Diction, the word. The good word. And when God looked at something and it says six times, and he saw that it was good. In fact, twice it says he saw it was good and he blessed it. He was blessing. He was giving benediction. When he looked at something and he saw that it was good.

Now, what does it mean? What was God doing when he did that? Do we think that God made something? And then he stood back and he said, what do you know? That's good. You know, that's how we do it. We make something, we stand back and say,

Good. It was good. No, if you're omniscient and omnipotent, you don't need to figure out whether what you did was good. You know what's good. You make it good. You're omnipotent and you're omniscient. What it means then is he made something and then he saw that it was good. It meant he was enjoying it. He was delighting in it. So first of all, blessing means to delight in something.

But not all. The other place we can go into the Bible to give us an idea behind this idea of blessing is to look at how fathers blessed their children at the end of their lives. Now, it was typical in ancient times and in biblical times that when a man was about to die, the father of a family, that he would gather his children around and he would bless them.

You see a number of these places, like, for example, at the end of Genesis when Jacob does this. And what does that mean? Well, on the one hand, when the father would bless his child, he would be wishing them well. He'd be saying, I long for your good. I long for your prosperity. May you be like this and may you be like this and may you be, you know. So on the one hand, he's delighting in the child and he's longing for their prosperity and their good. But that's not all he does.

The blessing of a father was objective as well as subject. It was practical as well as emotional because he doesn't just wish for their good. He actually divides up his property and he bestows his property on the child in order to achieve that good. He doesn't just wish them good. He actually commits his wealth, his estate to the child in order to achieve that good.

And that is what, you see, blessing means. And now we begin to realize what it means for God to say to any human being, I bless you. Because for God to say, I bless you, for God to say it, is to say, I delight in you. And not only do I delight in you and wish you well, I am committed to

with all my power to achieving your good. I don't just wish that you have a good life. I'm going to achieve a good, and I'm going to be expensively present with you all of your life. That is to say, I'm willing to pay the price, whatever it takes, for your good. That's the reason why it says the Lord bless you and keep you. Why? He doesn't just wish you well, he achieves. He doesn't just wish the good, he achieves the good. Now, how important is the blessing of God to us? Perhaps our best case study is

And the Bible is the story of Jacob. Jacob and Esau were twins, and they were born to Isaac and Rebekah. Now, Esau was the first one out. Obviously, the first one out is technically the older twin, though it's obvious that they were pretty much the same age. You're going to virtually the same moment. But Esau was the first one to pop out.

And because he was the first one to pop out, in ancient times, the law of primogeniture was that the oldest son got the macro blessing, got the great majority of the estate, became head of the clan, got most of the wealth, and therefore got the major blessing of the father at the end of the father's life. And so out pops Esau. However, God sent a prophecy, an oracle, to Jacob.

And God said, look, even though Esau is coming out first, I want you to know Jacob is the one that I'm going to work with. Jacob is the one through whom I'm going to bring my salvation to the world. And therefore, I want you to bless Jacob. I want you to make Jacob the head of the clan. I want you to give Jacob the major blessing and the birthright. But Isaac put his heart, he set his heart on Esau. And he loved Esau and he doted on Esau and he ignored the prophecy and he ignored Jacob.

And Jacob grew up angry and needy like any kid whose father withdrew his affection and his blessing. But when Isaac was very old and was practically blind, and the time came for him to be giving the blessing to Esau, Jacob, with the help of his mother Rebekah, dressed up as Esau, went into his father and posed as Esau. And the father gave, Isaac gave Jacob a verbal blessing.

But now, see, Jacob was under no illusions that Isaac wasn't going to find out about it. There was no way that Isaac was going to actually bestow the headship of the clan, was going to actually bestow the majority of the wealth. You know, he knew Isaac would certainly find out about it. Esau would find out about it. So why in the world did Jacob do it? And the answer is Jacob was so empty inside, so needing of his father's blessing that he was willing, even under false pretenses...

Just to do anything, to hear his father say, even under false pretenses, he wanted to hear his father say, you are my beloved child. In you I delight and am well pleased. Everything I have is yours. He wanted to hear that even though he knew it was a lie. He just wanted to hear it once.

And of course, Isaac did find out about it almost immediately. He was horrified and Esau found out about it almost immediately. And he wanted to murder his brother, Jacob. And Jacob had to leave. Jacob left and got nothing. Jacob never saw his mother again, never saw his father again. His whole life blew up, all because he so desperately wanted blessing. Why does this story resonate with us so much? The idea that we so desperately want someone from outside, someone of great worth...

To say to us, someone of unique and great worth to say to us, we are of unique and great worth. We need that. We need someone to bless us. We actually can't bless ourselves. Now, this creates a problem.

Because we're social beings. God made us that way. And therefore, we can't just bless ourselves and say, I don't care what anybody else thinks. Now, that's what the... By the way, contemporary culture says that. You shouldn't take your self-image from what anybody else thinks. That way, you'd be under their control. All that should matter is what you think. But it doesn't work. You know it doesn't work. And as a result, we're stuck in a conundrum. One of the funniest examples of this conundrum is...

It's from Bridget Jones' diary. And there's one place where Bridget Jones makes these three notes to self. Okay. Number one, buy books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves. Okay. Note two, develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as a woman complete without boyfriend since very best way to obtain boyfriend.

See the point. You can't act like you need a boyfriend because if you need a boyfriend, you won't get a boyfriend. So you have to act like you don't need a boyfriend, which is the best way to get a boyfriend. You see the conundrum yet? Here's the best one. Note three, be assured, receptive, responsive woman of substance. Knowing my sense of self comes not from what other people think, but from myself. Wait, that can't be right.

What she's saying is this. You want to say to yourself, I don't care what anybody else thinks, but that's a crock. You are a social being. You can't be assured of your own worth unless somebody of worth outside of you comes and says, one thing.

You are a person of great worth. And number two, and I'll be there for you. I'm committed to you. You have to have somebody from outside come and say that to you. But if that's the way we are, then you go around so desperately needing people to say that to you. And you exploit them, or in a very often case, this is you're exploited by them. And that's the reason why, on the one hand, you're trying...

as much as you can, modern people, is you're trying to bless yourself, which you can't do, and therefore you also know that if you don't bless yourself, somehow nobody else will bless you, and so you act like you are blessed on the inside when you actually aren't, but that's how you're going to get other people's approval and blessing because if you look too needy. Do you realize what the problem is? Do you realize what the solution is? Because here's the solution is you need the blessing of God. If you have the blessing of God, then you have that inner poise. You've got that confidence that

You know who you are, but you're not that needy. You're not running all around. What you get from other people is icing. It's gravy. It's nice, but it's not absolutely crucial. That's the reason why it says, the Lord bless you and keep you, et cetera, and give you peace. That word peace is the word shalom. And we've talked about that recently. The word shalom is the Hebrew word that means absolute and utter fulfillment of your deepest desires. What is that saying?

For the Lord to bless you and keep you, right? He doesn't just wish you're good. He's committed to your good. For you to know that and for you to have his blessing is the way to get absolute fulfillment. Otherwise, you're going to be exploiting other people or exploited by them. That's the blessing of God. Wow. All right. How does that come to us? Here's how it comes to us. Let's look at the next part. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

What does that mean? The face of God is his relational presence. Do you know the difference between the face of God and just the general presence of God? Like, you could be in a room...

A small room, and you're at a table, and there's ten people in the room, and they're all eating together. And there's a sense in which you are present to all of them. You can see them. You could actually speak to any of them you wanted to. So it's a small room. In a way, you're present to all of them, but at the moment, your face is turned only to one person, and you're having a conversation with him or her. And when the Bible talks about the face of God...

It's not actually saying, for example, that the face of God is everywhere. The presence of God is everywhere. God is present with everyone, but he doesn't have a personal relationship with everyone. And that's what the face means. For God's face to be turned upon you and to shine, which is the idea of a smile, which is the idea of joy and radiance. For God's face to be turned to you and shine upon you means to have an intimate personal relationship with God.

Now that's wonderful, but that's also a problem. Because I want you for a minute to imagine what Moses thought when he was told by God that at the end of the tabernacle service, every time Israel worshiped, at the end of the service, the high priest were to say, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you. Now you know why he would be astounded by this? Because when Moses was up on the mountain,

Mount Sinai, at one point he turned to God and he said, let me see you. Show me yourself. It was actually a request for intimacy. And what does God say? No one can look upon my face and live. No one can look upon my face and live. Why not? Because though God is present everywhere, we have lost his face. That's one of the main points of the Bible.

One of the Bibles, the first main point of the Bible is that we had the face of God in the garden of God, in the garden of Eden. But when we turned from him and we decided to be our own saviors, our own lords, our own masters, see, the captains of our own soul, we lost not the presence of God, he's everywhere, but the face of God, the love relationship, the personal relationship. And now when God says no one can look him on my face and live, what is he saying? He's saying my absolute holiness and glory is inherently God.

It is inherently incapable of dwelling with sin. They are inherently incompatible. Fire and water, you get them together. Either the fire is going to evaporate the water or the water is going to put out the fire. But they will not stay together. They're inherently incompatible. And when God says, you cannot look at my face and live, he's not just saying, I'm in a grumpy mood.

He's saying there is absolutely no way that sin can dwell with holiness or holiness can dwell with sin. And my faith is the relational gate into my holy and glorious character. This month, we're excited to let you know about a brand new resource based on Tim Keller's best-loved books. Go Forward in Love, a year of daily readings from Timothy Keller, features a short passage each day from one of Dr. Keller's books to use for daily reflection. Each

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So when Moses hears that God is saying, it is possible for my face to be turned upon you, to shine upon you, and therefore to get the blessing that comes through a personal relationship with me, he must have been sitting there saying, how in the world is that possible? Well, there's a hint, and it's a big hint, in the blessing itself. The Lord bless you and keep you.

Lord, make his face to shine upon you and be gracious. And see, when Moses heard that, he must have said, yeah, that's right. If the Lord's face is shining upon us, it must be an act of radical grace. Somehow God must be doing something with this sin. What would it be? Well, here's the one thing. Here's the only hint that Moses had. The blessing, the benediction comes at the end of the tabernacle service, never at the beginning.

Because during the tabernacle service, you had the offerings, you had the sacrifices, the atonement, the blood sacrifices for sin. And because you had that, there was some indication. Now, Moses, nobody really knew quite what it indicated, that somehow God was going to deal with our sin so that we could eventually have that relationship with him back. But what was it? Moses didn't know, but we do, because we know Hebrews 10.

Day after day, every priest stands again and again offering the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when this priest, Jesus Christ, offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. One priest offered the ultimate sacrifice

offered himself as a sacrifice, Jesus Christ. And therefore we read in John 1, Jesus tabernacled among us and we beheld his glory. And 2 Corinthians 4, for God made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. How is that possible?

It wasn't just some animal sacrifices. It was Jesus' sacrifice. But how did that actually bring us into a position where we can get the face of God shining upon us and therefore the blessing? And the answer is actually, interestingly, embedded back in this story we started with.

When Jacob and Rebekah were working to fool Isaac, before they actually did it, Jacob expressed his fear. Pardon me, Jacob. Yeah, his fear to Rebekah, to his mother. And Jacob said, Mom, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I won't just lose the blessing of my father, but I'll actually get his curse. What if he curses me? And Rebekah, in her rashness,

says this to her son, "'Upon me be your curse.'" And one commentator says this about that place in Genesis 27. In the most awesome reversal of all, Jesus graciously says to us what Rebecca rashly said to her son, "'Upon me be your curse.'" Think about that statement. The words Rebecca said so carelessly, never thinking that they might come true. Jesus said,

Even though he knew the full depths of what he was saying. The curse that Jacob deserved for his trickery, the curse which you and I earned for ourselves every day by our manifold sinfulness, was laid upon him so that the blessing, the blessing, the blessing that was rightfully Jesus's might be given to us. Jesus wore the shroud of death that we deserved so that we might lawfully be clothed in our true elder brother's garments, the spotless robes of Christ's righteousness. Blessing?

Comes when you say, you are my beloved child. In you I am well pleased. Everything I have is yours. And now you see how it can be done. Because Jesus Christ took the curse we deserve. So the blessing that he deserved falls on us. And that, you know, John chapter 17, before he goes to the cross, he actually prays to the Father and he says, Father, give them, that's us, the glory. Give them the glory. Give my disciples the glory that I had with you yesterday.

before the foundation of the world. What does that mean? It means the gospel is that everything we deserve fell on Jesus so that everything he deserved falls on us. What does he deserve to rule and reign? And the Bible says we're going to do it. We're going to sit with him. Whatever that means, I don't know what it means.

I don't completely know what it means, but I do know it means that God can look at you if you are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, if you have wrapped yourself in him, if you have asked God to accept you because of what Jesus has done for you, then the Father can look at you and say literally, you are my beloved child in Christ. You absolutely delight me and everything I have is yours. That's the thing you've always wanted.

That's the thing you... Benediction. It's a thing that we desperately want. It's a thing that is driving all of our lives. And it comes because Jesus Christ says, I'm going to be there for you. I'm not just going to wish you good. I'm going to pay the price necessary for your good. And he did. Now, lastly, that's what the blessing is. And that's how the blessing comes. Now, lastly, how does it actually...

change your life. Does the blessing of God just mean you feel better? You know, have a nice inner feeling? No, because we're told at the very end, the blessing of God names us. Look, verse 27, and so they will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them. Now, you know, you saw baptisms tonight. Whenever a Christian is baptized, you're baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It's the same thing. When you become a Christian,

To be blessed is another way. The way God blesses you is he doesn't just shine on you, smile on you, make you feel loved in general. He puts his name on you. What does that mean? Well, for a minute, and by the way, every benediction is a reaffirmation of your baptism. Every time you hear the benediction, it's reconfirming what God says to you in your baptism. What is this name stuff? Imagine somebody, a kid is an orphan, completely a child,

you know, alone in the world, completely powerless, completely forlorn, and some great family adopts him, what does he get? In other words, he gets the family name put on him. What does he get? Identity, solidarity, accountability, security, and intimacy. See, first of all, identity. Maybe before his name was Thomas, but now it's Thomas Smith or whatever the name is. He's got an identity. He knows who he is. There's a confidence. There's a poise. That's a big part of the blessing, but not only that. Secondly, he's got identity.

Solidarity. He's in a family now. He's not alone anymore. If he's got a problem, he's got support. He's got defense. He's got somebody who's going to be there for him. But then third, accountability. Ah, because now you've got the family's name on you. That means you represent the family to the world and you can't just live any old way. You,

You know, the family name is on you. You can't live any old way you want. You represent the family. There's accountability. So there's identity and there's solidarity. There's accountability. Oh, but there's also security and intimacy because to be in a family, to have a father is not to have a boss. Because you see, when you're a bad daughter or son, you don't get fired as a daughter or son. You get something worse. You get loved, which is a lot harder than being fired.

Because, see, to be loved when you're not living the way you ought is, it hurts, but it changes you. And you're absolutely secure because, you know, when a son or a daughter starts to act up, you don't fire the child. You actually start to love them worse and love them better and more intensely than the others, if anything. And all of that...

It's part of your blessing. It shapes you. It changes the way you live because of the accountability. It changes your relationship with others because of the solidarity. It changes your whole attitude toward life and yourself because of the change in identity. It changes your relationship with God, of course, because of the security and the intimacy. Now, what are you supposed to do with that? I would like to end by just suggesting two things. I want you to, the blessing of God, I want you to give it and seek more of it. I want you to give it and seek more of it. What do I mean by give it? Give it.

Here's what I mean. When I was in graduate school, I was in a very bad situation. Low spiritual ebb. A lot of great difficulties. Didn't know where I was going. Many, many ways. And of course, like a lot of people in grad school, I had just a job. Pretty bad job. In the summertime, between years. And...

One summer I heard that not too far away from where I was working, there was a man who was a minister, a good preacher, a professor who I really respected a lot was having a conference. So I said, okay, I'd met him once before in my life. I said, well, I'll go to the conference and I'll see him and maybe I could speak to him afterwards. So I went to the conference, listened to him speak, really liked it. And I came up afterwards hoping he'd remember me. But even as I began to introduce myself, he named me.

He says, oh, I know you. You're Tim. And then he said, let's talk. He got me away from the crowd. He sat down in a little restaurant, bought a soda, talked, listened, listened to everything that was going on, was interested in everything, gave advice, said, I want you to call me, made himself available. I could have wept. Turned me all around. Why? Because what he had done was he blessed me. A somebody bestowed himself on a nobody person.

And it turned me around. See, at the time, I just felt like one of those little, you know, when cartoonists try to create a crowd, represent a crowd in a cartoon, just create these little faceless circles out there. And that's why I felt like one of them. And here comes this guy and he blesses me and he names me. And I began to remember my identity in Christ. I began to remember my solidarity. I began to remember my accountability. Now you go do it.

You know when the Bible says to Christians, bless one another, bless and curse not. Do you know what it means to bless each other? Let's go back to what blessing means. Blessing means you find something great about somebody. You not only tell them it's good, but then you commit yourself to that person. You make yourself available to that person. Now this is something that Christians in New York don't want to do because we do not want to be bothered. We don't want people to feel like that they have access to us. That's the worst thing.

We've got things to do. We've got places to go. I'm telling you, how dare you, who live by the blessing of God, refuse to give it to other people. Here's how you bless somebody. There's three things you can always find people doing well. Fruit, gift, sacrifice. Fruit means in some small ways the person is growing and making progress in their life. Gift means they have talents and they have abilities that maybe other people don't really appreciate.

and sacrifices. They might be really working hard in some area and making sacrifices other people don't see. Catch them doing those things and go and praise them for it. Compliment them. C.S. Lewis says, a person who habitually praises and compliments and affirms is a person filled with inner health. A person who's always finding fault and always criticizing everybody. It's the opposite. That's cursing people. Bless one another. Bless and curse not.

You ought to be going out of your way at least two or three times a day to finding people around you, people who are Christians, people who are non-Christians, people who are in the church, people who aren't, people at work. And you go out and look for the fruit, look for the gifts, look for the sacrifices, bless them and make yourself available to them. How dare you not? You live by the blessing of God. You have no life without the blessing of God. Now go bless other people. So give it. But secondly, seek more of it. Here's what I mean by that. At the end of the service, when someone...

that gives you the benediction. Remember we said that blessing is always objective and subjective. So on the one hand, when you hear the benediction, what it's saying is, I don't care how you feel right now. God is saying to you, I don't care how you feel right now. My face is shining on you. I don't care if everybody else in the world, every other face that you've met today has been raining on you. Mine is shining on you.

Because in Christ, I delight in you. You are my beloved child. Everything I have will be yours. That's objective. But don't forget, blessings are always subjective. Fathers who are blessing their children don't just want to put money in their account. They also want to make that love connection. And Charles Spurgeon said,

Great Baptist preacher from the 19th century once spoke about his prayer life like this. He said, How's your prayer life?

See, look, I know it's a little dangerous to point to that sort of thing. I don't want to give you the impression that that's regular or easy. But I want to ask you a question. Do you know anything of that at all? Do you know anything of that at all? I don't know enough of it. And the point of blessing is that God doesn't want to just objectively bless you. He wants you to sense his love on your heart. We are settling for crumbs in our prayer life, and he wants to give you a feast.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. You live by the blessing of God. Give it and seek more of it. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that we can bless one another because you blessed us. And we really want to be a church filled with people who through praising and affirming and opening and connecting and naming the people around them, build other people up.

because you've built us up. So Father, we do thank you for your benediction. We thank you for how you achieved it. And we pray that you would help us to live as people who know it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you found today's teaching helpful and something you'd like more people to hear, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the hope and joy of Christ's love. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner to learn more.

Today's sermon was preached in 2008. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.