Two small silver scrolls about one inch long were found near Jerusalem. They were on amulets in a burial cave in the Valley of Hinnom and they date from the sixth or seventh century BC. Currently they are the oldest example of any text of Scripture and they contain this benediction in Hebrew.
24 ‘ “ ‘The LORD bless you and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face towards you and give you peace.’ ”

These were the words of the blessing God gave to Moses for Aaron and his descendants to declare in order to bless the Israelites forevermore. This is known as the Aaronic blessing or the Priestly blessing.
22 The LORD said to Moses, 23 ‘Tell Aaron and his sons, “This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

Let’s start by thinking about
The Power of Blessings
The word BLESS / blessing is a very biblical word – more than 400 times in the Bible. A blessing is a “bestowal of some good” which can be any form of material or spiritual well-being. Most of the time it is God who gives the blessing. So just in Genesis alone we read 65 times about the LORD blessing Adam and Eve, and the whole creation, and Noah, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and a few other people as well. Throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy we read another 64 promises of God blessing His chosen people Israel. And Psalms and Proverbs especially speak another 81 times of the blessings God has for those who seek and trust and obey Him.
When God speaks words of blessing and when God makes a promise that someone will be blessed, things happen! Because God’s words are an expression, and even an extension of His personality and His authority. When God speaks, things happen. God said let there be light – and there was light. When God speaks words of blessing, the person receives that blessing every time. Here in Numbers 6 God delegated to the priests, to Aaron and to his descendants, the authority to declare his blessing on his people.
We know the power of prayer. But let’s be clear, in the Bible pronouncing a blessing on someone is distinctly different to praying for them. It is not asking that God might bless somebody – but declaring the promise that God will bless them. Remember how Jesus blessed the little children when they came to Him. Those mothers who brought their children to Jesus knew that Jesus saying a blessing on them would make a difference to their lives, And when Jesus sent out his disciples to preach the gospel and teach and hear and minister deliverance in Luke 10:5-6, 9-12 he instructed his disciples to proclaim a blessing wherever they stayed.
Luke 10:6 “When you enter a house, first say, `Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Jesus was teaching that the words His disciples spoke would convey God’s blessing and God’s peace to the people they spoke to.
The priests in Israel had God’s authority to pronounce his blessing on the people. As Christians we are all priests in God’s eyes and so we also all have the same authority to pronounce God’s blessing – to declare how God will bless. When we do this, it will not just be empty words, nor even optimistic prayers. Our words of blessing will be authoritative. Because we speak on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ, the blessings we declare in Jesus’s name WILL come to pass. So let’s look at this Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6 and see the blessings which it brought to the Israelites and which it can bring to us as well.
We can see these phrases either as six separate blessings, or read them in pairs as three blessings where the first half speaks of what God does and the second on the effect which that divine action has in the lives of believers.
The Lord Bless You
It is the LORD, Yahweh, the God who is the great I AM, who will bless the Israelites
God had first promised his blessing to Abraham in Genesis 12
2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

This blessing was repeated when Isaac gave his blessing to Jacob in Genesis 28 3 May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. 4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham.
God’s blessings promised to the Patriarchs were not just family and descendants and a land of their own but included many other material blessings.

Moses told the nation of Israel
Deuteronomy 28 3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
So many rich physical and material blessings! But of course the greatest blessing for the Israelites did not lie in material prosperity but in knowing God and being his chosen people!

Leviticus 26 9 “ ‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. 10 You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. 11 I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.

In the Priestly Blessing Aaron and his descendants will proclaim all these material and spiritual blessings to the Israelites, forever. And the result of God blessing his people follows on. The Lord bless you,
And keep you
Other translations say, “And protect you”, “watch over you,” “take care of you,” “guard you.”
In Psalms 121 in the old Authorised King James Version the Lord is referred to as ‘Israel’s keeper’
Psalm 121 3 He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD watches over you— the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

God’s blessings will rest on the Israelites, and keep them safe and guard them and preserve them from harm. In the same way God’s blessings come to us as Christians. Most important of all is the blessing of a personal relationship with Almighty God – He is our Heavenly Father and we are his beloved children. And he will watch over us and protect us and keep us safe and preserve us too.
And there’s more.
The Lord make his face shine on you
God spoke into the darkness and said, “let there be light” and brought the whole of Creation into existence. Wherever the light of God’s presence shines it brings life. For this reason a number of times in the Psalms the writers pray that God’s face will shine on them.

Psalm 31 16 Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.
Psalm 67:1 begins May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us.
Psalm 31:16 prays, Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.
Psalm 80 echoes the same phrase no less than THREE times.
Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.

The Priestly Blessing declares that God’s face will indeed shine on his people, and here will be the result. The Lord make his face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you
Other translations read, “Be merciful to you,” “surround you with loving-kindness,”
The word has many shades of meaning – showing mercy, being gracious, showing favour. As we saw last week God poured his love out to Israel not because of any merits in themselves, but because of his own divine nature of loving-kindness.
Deuteronomy 7 7 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.
The Priestly Blessing declares that God will always show his mercy to Israel because that is an essential element in his character of unfailing love. God is love! And for us as believers, God will shine his glorious light into our lives as well. He will keep us in his steadfast love and his infinite mercy too.

And there’s more.

The Lord turn his face towards you
In the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, when God turns his face away from somebody or hides his face from them that is an expression of anger or judgment. On the other hand when God turns his face towards somebody that is an expression of divine pleasure.
The result of God turning his face towards his people is this.
And give you peace
Leviticus 26 3 “ ‘If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
6 “ ‘I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.

In the Bible, peace is not just the absence of conflict. It embraces prosperity, children, security, land, happiness, health. But shalom also has a much broader sense of completeness, wholeness, well-being, tranquility. It means peace in relationships between human beings. And peace means reconciliation between people and their God. Peace was at the heart of the wonderful salvation God gave to the Israelites and peace is at the heart of the even more marvellous salvation we have received through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Psalm 29:11 The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace.
God promised peace to Israel. And even more God promises his peace to us as believers today. But as with all of God’s blessings we need to actively receive his peace.

Isaiah 26 3 You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
4 Trust in the LORD for ever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal.

NLT You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on you.

God promises us his peace, but we need to receive that peace for ourselves. And we can do that by praying.

Philippians 4 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them
Through this blessing, God put his name on his chosen people. God putting his name on a person is in a sense a symbol of ownership –he is our God and we belong to God. God put his name on the Israelites – they were known to belong to Him.
Deuteronomy 27:9 The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. 10 Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. 11 The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity
The Israelites belonged to God. Now as believers and followers of Jesus, we are God’s chosen people, his royal priesthood, his holy nation, his special possession. God has put his name on us – we are known as Christians. Here at the very beginning of the story of Israel we find an anticipation of all the blessings which are waiting for us in glory at the end of our salvation.
Revelation 22 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

God has put his name on us. But we do not need to wait for heaven. The Priestly Blessing declares God’s love and protection and light and mercy and peace on his chosen people. These blessings are available to us right here, right now. We can receive all these blessings for ourselves, when we put our own names where it reads “you”. And we can pass these blessings on to other people when we address them and use their names in place of “you”.

24 ‘ “ ‘The LORD bless you and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face towards you and give you peace.’ ”