Can God change your circumstances? Sure. But you can experience the blessing of Numbers 6 even in the wilderness. You can know that God is providing for you and protecting you, that he is favorable toward you. You can experience a deep sense of wellbeing even in a wheelchair or wherever you are, because you are seeing what human eyes can’t: that he is at work in your life, and that he loves you, and he will bring you safely home.
I want to take you back with me some three thousand years.
You are in the desert. You’re one of 600,000 people trying to get by in a very inhospitable place. It’s like the worst camping trip ever. I love camping as much as anyone, but one of the best parts of camping is going home and enjoying the comforts of home.
But this is like the camping trip that never ends. The trip was supposed to be two weeks long, but it has turned into a forty-year journey. However, our kids, not us, will be the ones to reach the final destination.
I want you to imagine being with me on a particular day that’s not a very good one. You’re hot. It’s close to 30 degrees Celsius. You think back to before you entered the wilderness. Life was tough then, but at least you had better food. There’s not much water around, and you’re thirsty.
This is your life. This isn’t a temporary setback that you will overcome. Things will never get better than this for you. You will spend your whole life moving tents and recalling your last delicious meal from a long time ago while struggling to survive in the wilderness. Eventually, you will die. This is your life, and it’s never going to get better.
But that morning you’re close enough to see Aaron, the high priest, raise his hands over you, and hear him bellow these words:
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 6:22-27)
The tension we might feel is: this blessing sounds great, but what does it mean when you’re living in the wilderness waiting to die? What is the meaning of God protecting us, shining his face upon us, and giving us peace in the middle of the wilderness?
We’re going through Aaron’s blessing in this series. We’ve been studying these words that have been used for thousands of years, given by God as a blessing to his people. God promises to provide and protect us in the wilderness. He comforts us by showing us his face and being gracious to us. We’re going to continue exploring what this means as we look at the third line of the blessing today.
But, at some point, we have to face this tension. This blessing seems way too exalted for our circumstances. Life was tough in the wilderness as they first heard this blessing, and it’s going to be tough for some of us to hear this blessing too.
A Summary of the Blessing
Let’s quickly remember what the blessing is about.
It’s only three lines. Each line builds on the one before. It starts with a trickle and builds to a crescendo. It goes from 3 to 5 to 7 Hebrew words.
In each of the three lines, God is the subject. He takes action. We are the recipients. And the action he takes is essentially that he has a favorable attitude towards us:
- He blesses
- He makes his face shine
- He lifts up his face upon us
That’s the first part of each line.
The second part wishes that God does something positive for us:
- He protects
- He’s gracious — not just in attitude, but in terms of taking action for us in a gracious way
- He gives wellbeing
This is God’s heart for us. And because of who God is, the always accomplishes what he sets out to accomplish. This is what he intends to accomplish in our lives.
Today we’re looking at the third line of the blessing in which God lifts us face upon us. It’s the opposite of God turning his face away from us. In other words, God looks at us favorably. He looks at me favorably. If you are in Jesus Christ, he looks at you favorably too.
Pause there. I can’t quite get my head around this.
There’s a paragraph in Marilynne Robinson’s book Gilead. The main character is a preacher, and he says this:
I had a dream once that I was preaching to Jesus Himself, saying any foolish thing I could think of, and He was sitting there in His white, white robe looking patient and sad and amazed. That’s what it felt like.
I can relate to that, can’t you? I think that’s how many of us picture God looking at our lives: patient, sad, and amazed. Deep down, we feel that God must be deeply disappointed in us at best.
But God comes along and says that he looks favorably upon his people. He doesn’t look upon us with disappointment. He’s not shaking his head sadly when he looks at you. He looks at you favorably. His heart is one of favor and delight in you. That’s what the first part of the third line tells us.